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Mireton of Veal
Chop fine some cold roasted veal, mix with it one-half pound of ham also very finely-chopped and season it with salt, pepper and grated nutmeg. Soak the crumb of a French roll in one teacupful of milk. Slice a small onion and fry it until nicely-browned in a little butter; then drain and mince it fine; put all the above ingredients in a saucepan with the grated peel of a lemon and one teacupful of cream and stir it over the fire until it is hot. Beat an egg well and add it to the mixture, then move the saucepan off the fire; butter a mould, pour the mixture into it and press the lid down tightly; put the mould in the oven and brown the contents slightly. When cooked place the mireton on a hot dish, pour some rich gravy over it, and serve.
A moulded loaf of leftover roast veal, bound with egg and cream and browned in its mould. The original assumes a cook who already knows how a forcemeat behaves, so the two things worth pinning down are the vessel and the moment the egg goes in.
- The hinge: egg off the heatThe mixture is heated first, then the beaten egg is stirred in and the pan comes straight off the fire. If the cream mixture is simmering when the egg arrives it will scramble and the loaf turns grainy. Let it drop below a simmer, add the egg, stir hard, and move it off.
- A teacupfulIn nineteenth-century cookbooks a teacupful was not a standardised measure; it is variously reckoned from a gill (4 oz) up to about 6 oz, and in any case smaller than a modern 8 oz cup. Treat each teacupful here as roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of a cup, and judge by the consistency of the mixture.
- The crumb of a French rollThe soft interior of one small crusty roll, crust discarded — about a cup of torn crumb, which will drink the milk and swell. Squeeze out any milk that has not been absorbed, or the mixture will be too loose to unmould.
- Quantities to aim atThe recipe never says how much veal. Half a pound of ham wants about a pound of chopped cooked veal to balance it; less and the ham dominates. That gives four to five servings.
- SaltHalf a pound of ham is a great deal of salt by modern curing standards. Season the mixture at the end, after tasting, rather than at the start as written.
- The mouldA charlotte mould or metal timbale with a tight-fitting lid; a loaf pan sealed with buttered foil does the same work. Butter it generously — this mixture sticks. The lid keeps the surface from drying while the interior sets.
- Oven and timeOscar gives no temperature. Bake covered at 350F for 30 to 40 minutes until set to the centre, then take the lid off for the last five to ten minutes to get the slight browning he asks for. A pan of hot water under the mould keeps the egg custard tender.
- The gravy"Rich gravy" means the pan juices from the original roast, or a veal stock reduced with a little butter and flour. Without it the dish reads dry; it is part of the recipe, not a garnish.
- Lemon peelGrated peel of one lemon, zest only. Modern lemons are waxed, so scrub before grating.
The name is likely a variant spelling of the French miroton, which in nineteenth-century kitchen French meant a dish of sliced boiled beef, from the pot-au-feu, reheated in onion sauce — a way of putting yesterday's meat back on the table with some dignity. What this recipe offers is a chopped veal forcemeat bound with soaked bread, cream and egg, turned out whole and sauced. Veal itself was far more common on American menus in the 1890s than it is now, cheap enough to be a staple of both hotel and household cooking.