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Miroton of Veal
548. Mince some cold boiled or roasted veal with a third part of ham, bacon, or tongue; add to these a fifth part of bread-crumb soaked in milk, and an egg or two well beaten; season with pepper and salt, and a chopped onion browned in the frying-pan; stew all these together, then butter a mould adapted to the quantity made, put it in while hot, and bake in an oven till the surface is brown; then turn out of the mould, and serve with the gravy (see par. 282).
A Victorian way with leftover roast veal: a seasoned forcemeat, set in a buttered mould and browned in the oven. The proportions are given as fractions of the meat, so weigh the veal first and everything else follows.
- Working the proportionsFor 1 lb (450 g) minced cold veal you need about 5 oz (150 g) ham, bacon or tongue and about 3 oz (85 g) of soft breadcrumb, weighed dry, then soaked in milk and squeezed. Two eggs bind that quantity comfortably.
- "Stew all these together"Taken as a brief moist cooking in a pan over low heat until the mixture coheres and the crumb has swelled; the recipe specifies neither liquid nor time. The veal, and any tongue or cooked ham, are already cooked, so it need not be long, and longer cooking dries the veal.
- Oven heatThe book says only to bake until the surface is brown and gives no temperature; a moderate oven, around 350F (180C), answers. Allow 35-45 minutes for a mould of about 1 1/2 lb, until the top has coloured and the centre reads 165F (74C).
- The mouldA plain charlotte mould, pudding basin or small loaf tin all serve. Butter it well; "put it in while hot" most likely means the mixture goes in hot rather than that the mould is heated.
- Salt from the cured meatHam, bacon and tongue vary widely in saltiness. Season the mixture lightly and taste before adding more.
- The gravyThe cross-reference is to a gravy given elsewhere in the book. Any well-reduced veal or brown stock gravy suits it; the mould gives off little of its own and is dull without one.
- Reheated meatSince this is built from cooked meat that has been cold, keep it chilled until it goes into the pan and bring the finished mould right through to piping hot rather than merely browning the surface.
- YieldThe quantities above give six modest servings as a lunch dish, with salad or a sharp pickle to cut the richness.
Miroton (also spelt mirotton) is a French term for a dish of sliced or minced cooked meat reheated in a sauce, most familiarly the beef bœuf miroton served in onion sauce, and it is generally traced to the thrifty reworking of yesterday's boiled beef. English cookery books of the mid-nineteenth century used the word loosely and applied it, as here, to a moulded mince of cold meat browned in the oven. The recipe belongs to a class of Victorian reheating dishes built around the assumption that a household roasted or boiled a large joint and then had to account for it over several days, with breadcrumb, egg and a little cured meat doing the work of stretching and seasoning what remained. Veal was prized for its blandness and was often held to want exactly this kind of help from ham or tongue.