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Minced Veal with Macaroni
Mince fine one pound of veal, and mix with it one-fourth pound each of finelygrated breadcrumb and minced ham, together with a little lemon peel. Season the mixture with salt and pepper, and bind it together with two tablespoonfuls of rich gravy and two well-beaten eggs. Boil six ounces of macaroni, and when tender drain it well. Butter a mould, line it with macaroni, mix a little of the macaroni with the veal mixture, and turn it into the mould, pressing it tightly down. Stand the mould in a saucepan with boiling water to three-fourths its height, and steam it for half an hour. When cooked turn the veal and the macaroni out of the mould onto a hot dish, and serve with a sauceboatful of rich gravy.
Minced Veal with Mushrooms and Cream Empty a can of small mushrooms into a saucepan, put in a piece of butter and stew them for fifteen minutes over a clear fire. Chop fine some cold roasted veal and season it with pepper and salt. Mince the mushrooms, mix them with the veal and turn all into a saucepan with two ounces of butter that has been well worked with two ounces of flour and a little more than one-half teacupful of cream or creamy sauce. Stir the mixture well over the fire for a few minutes. Turn the mince out onto a hot dish, garnish with sippets of toast, and serve.
Two ways with veal from the Waldorf kitchen: a steamed macaroni-lined loaf built from raw mince, and a quick creamed hash meant to use up yesterday's roast. Both assume a cook with brown gravy already on hand.
- The hinge: cook the mould to temperature, not to the clockHalf an hour of steaming is optimistic for a tightly packed pound of raw minced veal; a dense loaf in a metal mould can still be pink at the centre. Take it to 160F on an instant-read thermometer, which may well mean appreciably longer than the half hour given.
- "Rich gravy"In period usage this generally meant a well-flavoured brown stock or gravy with body rather than a thin pan juice. Two tablespoons bind the loaf; the sauceboat will need a good deal more, so plan for it before you start.
- The mould and the water bathA charlotte mould, pudding basin or loaf tin all work; choose one that the mixture fills without being forced. Butter it generously, line the sides and base with the drained macaroni in an overlapping pattern, and cover the top with buttered parchment or foil so condensation does not waterlog the loaf. Water to three-fourths the height of the mould should be kept at a bare simmer, not a rolling boil, and topped up as it evaporates.
- MacaroniSix ounces dry is about 1 1/2 cups of elbow macaroni. Boil it a minute short of tender, since it steams on in the mould, and rinse briefly so it stops sticking while you line the tin.
- UnmouldingLet the mould stand five minutes off the heat, run a knife round the rim, then invert onto a warmed dish. Serving immediately matters more than usual here; the loaf slices cleanly hot and crumbles once it cools.
- Canned mushrooms, fifteen minutesCanned mushrooms are already fully cooked, so the long stew in butter is not doing anything to soften them; it may simply have been a way of cooking off the flavour of the tin. With fresh mushrooms, 8 ounces sliced and sautéed until browned and dry gives a better result in less time.
- The butter-and-flour pasteTwo ounces butter worked with two ounces flour is a beurre manie, whisked in raw to thicken. "A little more than one-half teacupful" of cream is somewhere in the region of a third to a half cup, depending on how the teacup is reckoned; that much flour will set very stiff, so thin with stock or milk to the consistency you want.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toasted or fried bread, arranged round the edge of the dish. They are structural as much as decorative, since the mince is loose.
- YieldThe moulded loaf serves four as a main course with a green vegetable; the creamed mince serves three to four, or four to six spooned over toast at lunch.
Both dishes belong to the frugal end of a grand hotel's repertoire: Oscar Tschirky's book is full of second-day preparations that turn cold joints into something a waiter could carry to a table. The moulded version is a pain de veau in the French manner, dressed up by lining the tin with macaroni so it turns out banded and glossy. Veal itself signals the period as much as the technique does: it was a staple of hotel and restaurant menus in 1896. The casual instruction to "empty a can of small mushrooms" in the second recipe is worth noticing too, a reminder of how thoroughly commercially canned goods had settled into even a first-class kitchen by then.