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Scalloped Veal
Mince a quantity of cold roasted veal, season it with salt, pepper and grated nutmeg, moisten it well with a few tablespoonfuls of cream, place it in a saucepan and stir it over the fire for a few minutes. Fill some scallop shells with the veal mixture, cover them over with grated breadcrumbs, put a few small bits of butter in each, and brown them in the oven or under a salamander. Place the shells on a folded napkin or an ornamental dish-paper laid on a dish, and serve them.
A leftovers dish dressed up for service, and the whole thing hinges on the veal already being cooked. The saucepan step is only to warm the mince and bind it, not to cook it further.
- Do not cook the veal twiceCold roast veal is lean and already fully cooked; two or three minutes over moderate heat to warm it through and loosen the cream is enough. Stirring it over the fire until it bubbles hard will make it dry and stringy no matter how much cream goes in.
- Salamander means broilerA salamander was a heated iron plate, in this period often a disc on a long handle heated in the fire and held over the dish, and later an overhead gas element; either way it was used for glazing and browning. A broiler on high, with the shells three to four inches below the element, does much the same job in two to four minutes. The recipe gives no oven setting; a hot oven, around 425F for ten minutes or so, is a reasonable modern equivalent.
- Scallop shellsReal deep-cupped scallop shells or the ceramic coquille dishes sold for the purpose hold roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup each. Small ramekins or a shallow gratin dish work identically; the shell is presentation, not technique.
- How much cream"A few tablespoonfuls" is per batch, not per shell. Aim for a mixture that mounds softly rather than pours — start with 3 tablespoons heavy cream per pound of minced veal and add more only if it looks dry.
- Grated breadcrumbsThis means crumbs grated from a stale loaf, coarser and drier than packaged crumbs and much coarser than panko. Dry your own from day-old bread if you want the topping to brown in patches rather than form a uniform crust.
- NutmegGrated fresh, and lightly — a few passes on a rasp for the whole batch. Nutmeg with cream and white meat is a standing pairing in this period, but pre-ground jarred nutmeg is flat and it takes very little to turn the dish medicinal.
- YieldA pound of minced cooked veal fills about six shells, enough for six as a first course or three as a light supper with a salad.
- The napkinThe folded napkin under the shells is not decoration alone; it keeps hot shells from sliding on the platter. A dish-paper or a folded cloth still does this.
Oscar Tschirky's book is full of these small hot entrées, in the French kitchen vocabulary the Waldorf ran on, and they solved a real problem for a large hotel and for the households copying it: what to do with the remains of a roast. Veal was a more common roasting joint in American kitchens around 1900 than it is now, and cold veal turns up frequently in period cookbooks as the starting point for hashes, croquettes, patties and scallops. The word "scalloped" is generally traced to an older sense of a dish baked in a shell, later broadened to mean anything baked with crumbs or cream, which is the usual explanation offered for scalloped potatoes despite no shell being involved.