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Quenelles of Veal
Trim off the fat from one pound of veal, chop, place it in a mortar and pound it. Put one breakfast cupful of breadcrumbs into a saucepan with one-half pint of milk and stir over the fire until smooth, then leave until cool. Stir the pounded veal and breadcrumbs well together, season with a small quantity of grated nutmeg, the juice of half a lemon, pepper and salt, and add one-half pint of white sauce, the yolks of four eggs--one at a time--and then the well-beaten whites of the eggs. Melt a lump of butter in a fryingpan, mould the mixture into quenelles with two tablespoons, which should be dipped in hot water each time a quenelle is moulded. Slip the quenelles off the spoons into the fryingpan, and when all are finished cover them with boiling white stock and cook them for twenty minutes. Prepare a border of mashed potatoes on a hot dish. When cooked drain the quenelles, put them on the border, with one tablespoonful of bechamel sauce on each, pour a quantity of bechamel sauce in the center of the dish, and serve the quenelles at once.
A classic forcemeat dumpling from Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf kitchen, written for cooks who had a marble mortar and a stockpot always going. A food processor does the pounding, but the poaching liquid must never boil.
- Poach, do not boilThe quenelles are set in a frying pan and covered with boiling white stock, but they should be held at a bare shiver, around 175-180F, for the twenty minutes. A rolling boil breaks the egg-bound panada and the quenelles disintegrate or turn spongy.
- MeasuresA breakfast cupful is roughly one cup (8 fl oz) of breadcrumbs; half a pint is about 1 cup of milk, and half a pint of white sauce likewise about 1 cup. The stock is not measured: use enough boiling white stock to cover the quenelles. "A lump of butter" means enough to film the pan, about 1 tablespoon.
- The panadaBreadcrumbs cooked with milk to a smooth paste is a panada; the recipe has it left until cool before the veal and eggs go in, which also keeps the yolks from scrambling. The recipe does not say which crumbs to use; finer, drier crumbs will give a firmer mixture.
- Veal and the mortarOne pound of trimmed veal, cut in cubes, goes into a food processor rather than a mortar. Work it very cold, in short pulses, until it is a fine smooth paste; warm meat will not bind the fat and the quenelles weep.
- White sauce and bechamelThe recipe assumes both are already made in the kitchen and gives no method for either. Both are white sauces of the same family; the bechamel is the one used for napping and saucing at table.
- White stockAn unroasted veal or chicken stock, pale and lightly salted. Salt it modestly, since it reduces slightly during the poach and the quenelles absorb it.
- ShapingTwo tablespoons dipped in hot water between each quenelle, as the recipe directs, give the classic smooth oval. Test one first: poach a single quenelle, and if it falls apart add a spoonful more crumbs to the mixture, if it is rubbery slacken it with a little milk.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. The count depends on the size of the tablespoons used; the mixture is substantial, so expect appreciably more than a dozen quenelles.
Quenelles belong to the older French repertoire of forcemeats, where pounded meat or fish bound with a bread-and-milk panada and eggs was shaped, poached, and sauced; the word is generally traced to the German Knodel, dumpling, by way of Alsace, and Lyon is the city most associated with the pike quenelle. Veal, being mild and pale, suits a preparation meant to be eaten under a sauce. It is in any case a dish that presumes a kitchen where white sauce, bechamel and white stock are all standing ready and a cook can be spared to pound meat in a mortar. A border of mashed potatoes piped around a hot platter was a familiar way of presenting anything small and saucy.