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Veal Fricadelles
Chop fine two pounds or more of lean veal and about three ounces of lean ham. Put one breakfast cupful of breadcrumbs in a saucepan with one-half pint of milk and stir it over the fire until cooked to a smooth paste, taking care that it does not burn at the bottom. Mix the bread with the chopped veal and ham, season the mixture with pepper, salt and the juice of half a lemon, and work it in with one-fourth pound of butter. When well mixed divide the mixture into small equal-sized portions, roll them into the balls, then dip them in beaten egg. Put one-fourth pound of butter into a fryingpan and when hot put in the balls and fry them until lightly browned. Great care must be taken not to burn them. Take the balls out of the fryingpan and stir into the butter three tablespoonfuls of flour. When a dark brown turn the flour into the saucepan, pour in by degrees one and one-half pints of stock, and when boiling put in the balls. Move the saucepan to the side of the fire and allow the contents to simmer slowly for an hour. Turn the fricadelles and gravy on to a hot dish garnished with slices of lemon or sippets of toast and croutons of fried bread, and serve.
A panade-bound veal meatball, browned and then braised in its own brown sauce. The measurements are late-Victorian hotel shorthand, and the fat is generous even by Waldorf standards.
- The hinge is the panadeBreadcrumbs cooked to a smooth paste in milk are what keep lean veal from turning grainy. Stir it constantly over low heat until it pulls away from the pan in one mass, then let it cool before working it into the meat, or the butter will melt out.
- Archaic measuresA breakfast cupful is roughly 8 to 10 fl oz of crumbs; treat it as 1 cup and add more only if the mixture will not hold a ball. Half a pint of milk is 1 cup; one and one-half pints of stock is 3 cups.
- ButterHalf a pound in total, split between the forcemeat and the frying pan. The quarter pound worked into the meat is doing real work as the fat content of lean veal; the quarter pound for frying can be cut to 3 or 4 tablespoons without harm, as long as enough remains to carry the flour.
- Chopping, not grinding"Chop fine" gives a coarser, looser texture than a modern grinder. If you use a machine, a single pass through a coarse plate is closer to the intent; twice through a fine plate makes it pasty.
- Egg dip onlyThe balls are dipped in beaten egg and nothing else. There is no crumb coating, so brown them gently in a moderately hot pan and move them as little as possible until a skin has set.
- The brown rouxThree tablespoons of flour into hot butter, cooked to "a dark brown," is a nineteenth-century brown roux. It goes from nut-brown to burnt in under a minute at frying-pan heat, so pull the pan off the heat as the color turns and add the stock in stages, whisking.
- The hour's simmerAn hour at a bare simmer is longer than modern practice for meatballs, and lean veal will tighten. Forty minutes is enough to cook them through and marry the sauce; if you do go the full hour, keep the liquid barely moving and check that the sauce has not reduced to paste.
- SippetsSippets are small triangles or fingers of toast, distinct from the fried bread croutons served alongside. Both are there to soak up gravy.
- YieldTwo pounds of veal makes about eighteen to twenty balls, enough for six as a main course with potatoes or rice.
Fricadelles come into English cookery from the Continent — the word is generally traced to the French fricadelle, itself related to the German Frikadelle and Dutch frikandel, all meaning a fried patty or ball of chopped meat. The bread-and-milk panade, the ham for savor, and the finishing garnish of lemon and fried bread are all marks of the classical service Oscar Tschirky was recording — the technique here is essentially that of a quenelle forcemeat, simplified for the range rather than the poaching pot.