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Veal Fritters
If you have only a little piece of veal or other cold meat, you can make a very presentable dish in the following way: Cut a thin slice of meat and spread on each side of it a layer of mashed potatoes to which you have added some tomato sauce. Beat up an egg and dip the slices and potato into it, lay them in fine breadcrumbs and fry them till a good golden color in plenty of fat. Send them to table under a hot cover.
A wartime leftovers dish: a slice of cold roast veal jacketed in mashed potato, breaded and fried. It works, but only if the potato coating is stiff and cold enough to hold.
- The hinge: stiff, cold mashMashed potato at eating consistency will slide off the meat and burst in the fat. Use potato mashed dry with little or no milk, well seasoned, cooled until firm, and press it on in a layer about 1/4 inch thick.
- Chill before breadingAssemble the cutlets, then refrigerate them 20-30 minutes before the egg and crumbs. A second pass through egg and crumbs on the cut edges gives a seal that will not leak.
- Tomato sauce quantityThe original gives none. A tablespoon or two of thick tomato sauce or passata per cup of potato is enough for flavour and colour; more makes the mash too loose to stand up.
- "Plenty of fat"The recipe does not say how deep; enough fat to come up the sides of the fritters, whether shallow-fried or deep-fried, answers the instruction. Modern practice would put the fat at roughly 350-360F, hot enough to set the crumbs at once, since the filling is already cooked and needs only heating through -- roughly 3 minutes a side.
- Fine breadcrumbsDried, sieved crumbs from stale bread, not the coarse panko or the sandy commercial variety. Fine crumbs are what gives the even golden surface described.
- Cold meat, thin slicesSlice the veal about 1/8 inch thick and no wider than a playing card, so each fritter turns in one piece. Cold roast pork, chicken or beef substitute directly.
- "Under a hot cover"A pre-warmed serving dish with a lid. In practice a covered dish steams the crust soft; a warm oven at 200F, uncovered, keeps them crisp while you fry the rest.
- YieldA cupful of mash and three or four slices of meat make three or four fritters -- a light supper for two with a green salad.
The Belgian Cook Book was published in 1915, gathering recipes from Belgian refugees who had fled the German invasion; the proceeds went to Belgian relief funds. That origin shows plainly here, in a recipe that opens "if you have only a little piece of veal" and turns a scrap into a plated course by way of potato, egg and crumbs. Breaded-and-fried leftovers are common to every European kitchen of the period -- the French croquette, the Italian cotoletta -- but the Low Countries leaned particularly hard on the potato, which had been a cheap staple of the Flemish smallholder for a century by then. The instruction to send the dish to table under a hot cover is a small survival of formal service in a book otherwise concerned with making very little go far.