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Veal Potted (for Breakfast)
INGREDIENTS.-To every lb. of veal allow 1/4 lb. of ham, cayenne and pounded mace to taste, 6 oz. of fresh butter; clarified butter, salt.
Mince the veal and ham together as finely as possible, and pound well in a mortar, with cayenne, salt, pounded mace and fresh butter in the above proportion. When reduced to a perfectly smooth paste, press it into potting-pots, and cover with clarified butter. If kept in a cool place, it will remain good some days. SEASONABLE from March to October.
Veal, Ragoût of Cold. (Cold Meat Cookery). INGREDIENTS. -The remains of cold veal, 1 oz. of butter, 1/2 pint of gravy, thickening of butter and flour, pepper and salt to taste, 1 blade of pounded mace, 1 tablespoonful of mushroom ketchup, 1 tablespoonful of sherry, 1 dessertspoonful of lemon-juice, forcemeat balls. AVERAGE Cost, exclusive of the cold meat, Id.
Any part of veal will make this dish.
Cut the meat into nice-looking pieces, put them in a stewpan with 1 oz. of butter, and fry a light brown; add the gravy (hot water may be substituted for this), thicken with a little butter and flour and stew gently about 1/4 hour ; season with pepper, salt and pounded mace; add the ketchup, sherry and lemon-juice; give one boil, and serve. Garnish the dish with forcemeat balls and fried rashers of bacon.
TIME.-Altogether hour.
SEASONABLE from March to October.
Note. The above recipe may be varied by adding vegetables, such as peas, cucumbers, lettuces, green onions cut in slices, a dozen or two of green gooseberries (not seedy), all of which should be fried a little with the eat, and then stewed in the gravy.
Veal Rissoles. (Cold Meat Cookery.) -INGREDIENTS. -A few slices of cold roast veal, a few slices of ham or bacon, 1 tablespoonful of minced parsley, 1 tablespoonful of minced savoury herbs, 1 blade of pounded ace, a very little greted outmeg, cayenne VEAL, SHOULDER OF and salt to taste, 2 eggs, well-beaten, breadcrumbs. Mince the veal very finely, with a little ham or bacon; add the parsley, herbs, spices and seasoning; mix into a paste with an egg; form into balls or cones; brush these over with egg, sprinkle with bread-crumbs and fry a rich brown. Serve with brown gravy, and garnish the dish with fried parsley.
TIME. - About 10 minutes to fry the rissoles.
SEASONABLE from March to October.
Veal Rolls. (Cold Meat Cookery.)- INGREDIENTS. -The remains of a cold fillet of veal, egg and bread-crumbs, a few slices of fat bacon, forcemeat.
Cut a few slices from a cold fillet of veal 1/2 inch thick rub them over with egg lay a thin slice of fat bacon over each piece of veal; brush these with the egg, and over this spread the forcemeat thinly; roll up each piece tightly, egg-and-bread-crumb them, and fry them a rich brown. Serve with mushroom sauce or brown gravy.
TIME.-10 to 15 minutes to fry the rolls.
SEASONABLE from March to October.
The page runs four veal recipes together. The three cold-meat dishes — the ragoût, the rissoles and the rolls — are straightforward reheating cookery. The potted veal that heads the page is a preserving recipe, and it is the one that does not survive contact with modern food safety.
- Why the potting failsA dense meat paste sealed under a layer of clarified butter is an anaerobic, low-acid, low-salt environment held at ambient temperature — the classic conditions in which Clostridium botulinum produces toxin. Potted meats have a documented history as a botulism vehicle, and the butter cap is what makes the risk rather than what prevents it.
- "A cool place" and "some days"Larders of the period were typically unheated, often north-facing rooms, and even those could not be relied on. The recipe gives no salt quantity, no curing agent, no heat treatment and no temperature, so there is nothing to scale or verify. Use a current potted-meat or rillettes recipe if you want the dish.
- Cooked or raw is never statedPotting normally started with cooked meat, and the placement among the cold-meat recipes implies leftovers, but the ingredient list does not say so. A recipe for a keeping preparation that is ambiguous about whether the meat has been cooked is not one to follow.
- Gravy in the ragoûtBeeton's half-pint (a UK pint is 20 fl oz, so 10 fl oz / about 1 1/4 cups) of "gravy" means household brown stock, not thickened sauce. Unsalted beef or veal stock is the sensible stand-in; she allows hot water, which will need considerably more seasoning.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup. It is a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, closer to Worcestershire sauce or a mushroom soy in effect. Either of those, used sparingly, gives the savoury depth intended.
- Pounded maceMace is the lacy aril around the nutmeg seed, sold as blades or ground. A blade is a small piece, worth somewhere between a quarter and a half teaspoon ground. It is related to nutmeg but milder, and it recurs constantly in this book's veal seasonings.
- Forcemeat ballsAssumed knowledge in this book: minced veal or bacon bound with breadcrumbs, suet, egg and herbs, rolled small and fried or poached. Beeton gives separate forcemeat recipes elsewhere; without one, a fine sausagemeat rolled into hazelnut-sized balls does the same job.
- Frying the rissoles and rollsThe book allows about 10 minutes for the rissoles and 10 to 15 for the rolls, aimed at cold cooked meat that needs only to heat through and colour. The veal is already cooked; work at a moderate heat so the crumb browns without the interior drying to sawdust.
- Green gooseberriesThe variation calls for a dozen or two hard, unripe gooseberries, used as a sharp acid rather than a fruit. Out of their short early-summer season, a little more lemon juice or a few halved green grapes with extra acid gets close.
Potting was the English answer to the problem of what to do with cooked meat before refrigeration: pound it to a paste with butter and spice, press out the air, and cap it with clarified butter to keep the surface from the air. The method is much older than Beeton — earlier cookbooks are full of potted venison, lampreys and beef — and it survived into the twentieth century as potted shrimps and potted beef, both of which are still made. The subtitle "for breakfast" suggests the Victorian sideboard, where a middle-class household is often said to have laid out cold potted meats, tongue and game pie for guests to help themselves. The neighbouring recipes explain the economy of the thing: a fillet or shoulder of veal was a large joint, and the ragoût, rissoles and rolls are three successive strategies for its remains. The seasonal note, March to October, is generally taken to reflect the calving year, when milk-fed veal was available.