Veal Galantine
INGREDIENTS for good-sized galantine. A small breast of veal, 2lbs. of sausage-meat, highly flavoured with herbs, lb. of cooked tongue, some truffles, mushrooms, pistachio nuts and gherkins. AVERAGE COST, from 4s. 6d. to 5s.
Bone the meat and flatten it well out, and spread over a thick layer of sausagemeat; next a layer of small dice cut from tongue, truffles, mushrooms and gherkins, VEAL GALANTINE. over which scatter a few chopped pistachio nuts, and over this spread another layer of sausage-meat. Roll in a cloth, as a jam pudding, and boil for 6 hours. When half cold, tie up tight and press with heavy weights upon the top, and, when wanted, glaze, and serve garnished with some bright aspic jelly (which may be made from the stock in which the veal was boiled) and parsley. Cut off the outside slice before serving, that the pretty marbled appearance of the inside of the galantine may be shown.
TIME.-6 hours to boil.
SEASONABLE form March to October.
Veal, To Carve a Knuckle of. -The engraving, showing the dotted line VEAL, KNUCKLE OF, knife in carving this dish. The best slices are those from the thickest part of the knuckle, that is, outside the line A to B.
Veal, To Ragoût a Knuckle of. -INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 or 5 persons. -Knuckle of veal, pepper and salt to taste, flour, 1 onion, 1 head of celery, or a little celery-seed, 1 faggot of savoury herbs, 2 blades of pounded mace, thickening of butter and flour, a few young carrots, 1 tablespoonful of tomato sauce, 3 tablespoonfuls of sherry, the juice of 1/2 lemon. AVERAGE COST, 2s. 6d.
Cut the meat from a knuckle of veal into neat slices, season with pepper and salt, and dredge them with flour. Fry them in a little butter of a pale brown, and put them into a stewpan with the bone (which should be chopped in several places); add the celery, herbs, mace and carrots; pour over all about 1 pint of hot water, and let it simmer very gently for 2 hours over a slow but clear fire. Take out the slices of meat and carrots, strain and thicken the gravy with a little butter rolled in flour; add the remaining ingredients, give one boil, put back the meat and carrots, let these get hot through, and serve. When in season, a few green peas, boiled separately and added to this dish at the moment of serving, would be found a very agreeable addition. TIME.-2 hours.
A galantine is a boned joint rolled around a forcemeat, poached, pressed and served cold in slices. The hinge is the rolling: the cloth must be tight and evenly filled, or the layers slump and the marbled cross-section the recipe is aiming at disappears.
- Boning the breastBreast of veal is a rib-and-cartilage cut; ask the butcher to bone it and remove the skin, leaving a single flat sheet. Flatten to an even thickness with a mallet so the roll is the same diameter along its length.
- The tongue quantityThe original reads "lb. of cooked tongue" with the fraction lost. Half a pound is the proportion that suits 2 lb of sausage-meat; judge by eye against the other diced garnish rather than treating any figure as fixed.
- Sausage-meatVictorian sausage-meat was typically coarsely minced pork, well fatted and seasoned with sage and pepper, sometimes mace; the recipe asks only that it be "highly flavoured with herbs". Bulk pork sausage meat works; if using skinned sausages, taste-check the seasoning by frying a teaspoonful, since the finished galantine is eaten cold and cold food reads blander.
- Truffles and substitutesFresh truffle here is a luxury flourish. A tablespoon of chopped preserved truffle, or well-drained cooked chestnut mushrooms plus a few drops of truffle oil, gives the dark flecks in the cut face without the expense.
- Rolling and tyingRoll in a scalded, wrung-out cotton cloth or several layers of muslin, twist and tie both ends like a jam roll, then tie along the length at 2 in intervals. A double layer of oiled foil inside the cloth keeps the poaching liquid from washing out the seasoning.
- Six hours is far too longThat timing belongs to a slow open fire and a joint boiled to complete surrender. A rolled boned breast of about 4-5 lb needs a bare simmer of 2 1/2 to 3 hours, until the centre reads 165F on a probe pushed through the cloth. Longer and the veal shreds and the forcemeat goes dry and crumbly.
- Pressing and chillingPress it, but do it in the refrigerator, not on the kitchen table. Retie tightly while still warm, set on a tray with a board and weights on top, and chill overnight; a large meat roll left at room temperature for hours sits in the range where bacteria multiply.
- The aspicStrain and thoroughly degrease the poaching stock, reduce it until well flavoured, then clarify and set it with gelatine (roughly 1/2 oz powdered gelatine per pint) unless the veal bones have given you a stock that sets firm on its own. Chop the set jelly for the garnish.
- YieldA galantine on this scale should serve roughly a dozen or more as a cold course, though the original gives no number beyond "good-sized". Slice thinly with a long sharp knife, cold and straight from the refrigerator, discarding the end slice as directed.
Galantine belongs to the cold buffet tradition of the nineteenth-century English country house and hotel sideboard, borrowed wholesale from French practice: a boned joint, stuffed, poached, pressed and glazed so that it could be carved in advance and set out looking deliberate. The word is often said to derive from Old French terms for a jellied dish, though the etymology is contested, and the jelly is the point structurally as well as decoratively, since the reduced veal stock sets firm enough to hold the slices together. Veal breast was the natural carcase for it, being cheap, thin, gelatinous and easy to lay flat, and the pistachios, tongue and truffle were chosen for colour on the cut face rather than flavour. That Mrs Beeton's compilers gave the cost as 4s. 6d. to 5s. and the season as March to October reflects a period when veal was a spring and summer meat and the galantine was expected on a table with cold pies and hams beside it.