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Boudins of Veal
Chop fine the remains of some cold veal and stir in with it some finely chopped bacon and parsley; season to taste with salt, pepper and the smallest quantity of mace. Place the mince in a stewpan, moisten it with a few tablespoonfuls of clear gravy and stir it over the fire until very hot; then move it to the side of the fire and stir in the beaten yolks of three eggs. Thickly butter the interior of some small tin boudin moulds, fill them three-fourths full of the above mixture and tie a sheet of buttered paper over each. Stand the tins in a stewpan with boiling water to about half their height and boil the contents for about twenty minutes. At the end of that time turn the boudins out of their tins onto a hot dish, pour some white sauce over them, and serve.
A leftovers dish dressed as an entrée: cooked veal, bound with egg yolk and steamed in small moulds. The one thing to watch is the yolk — it goes in off the heat, and the moulds want a gentle simmer, not a rolling boil.
- Boudin mouldsThese were small cylindrical tinned moulds, essentially dariole moulds. Metal dariole moulds, small ramekins, or a muffin tin all work; the mixture needs a straight-sided vessel it will release from cleanly.
- Off the heat for the yolks"Move it to the side of the fire" means take the pan off direct heat before the yolks go in. Stirred into a pan still on the burner they scramble in seconds and the boudins turn grainy instead of setting smooth.
- Clear gravyHere a strained, unthickened brown or veal stock rather than a flour-thickened pan gravy. A few tablespoons is enough to moisten the mince without making it loose.
- MaceGround mace is the outer covering of nutmeg, milder and more floral. "The smallest quantity" is accurate advice: about an eighth of a teaspoon for a pound of meat, no more.
- Buttered paperParchment cut in rounds and tied with string does the job the original describes; foil crimped over the rim is simpler. The point is to keep condensation from the lid off the surface of the custard.
- Simmer, do not boilDespite the word "boil," hold the water at a bare simmer around 180-190F. Hard boiling makes an egg-bound mince puff, weep and pull away from the mould walls.
- DonenessTwenty minutes suits small moulds of roughly 4 oz; larger ones will need longer. They are done when the centre is firm to a light press and reads 165F; let them stand two minutes before turning out.
- The sauce"White sauce" here is most likely a velouté, a white roux let down with veal stock rather than milk, which suits the dish better than a plain béchamel, though the recipe does not specify. Finish it with a little cream and lemon.
- YieldAs a rough reconstruction, about a pound of cooked veal with 2 oz bacon and the three yolks would fill six 4-oz moulds three-fourths full, serving four to six as a first course.
Boudin properly means a sausage, and the French kitchen extended the word to any soft forcemeat cooked in a casing or a mould — boudin blanc being the pale, egg-and-cream-bound kind this dish imitates without the gut casing. Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896 out of the Waldorf's kitchens, is full of these small moulded entrées. Veal was far more common on American tables then than now, and the pairing with bacon and mace is squarely in the older English tradition of forcemeats, in which mace was a common warm spice for potted and minced meats from the seventeenth century.