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Veal in Batter
4 tablespoonfuls milk tablespoonful olive or any good salad oil Scant cup sifted flour I 1 cups chopped veal teaspoonful salt A little white pepper 1/2 tablespoonful lemon-juice To the well-beaten yolk of the egg add the milk, oil, seasoning, flour, and lemon-juice. Beat the white of the egg stiff, and add to batter when ready to use. Stir into this the veal, which should not be chopped fine. Drop by spoonfuls into slightly smoking fat, and fry slowly to a golden brown. Drain on soft paper or cheese-cloth. These fritters may be served with or without a sauce. Chicken may be used instead of veal.
A plain fritter batter that turns yesterday's roast veal into a hot supper dish. The quantities in the original are loose, so treat the batter by consistency rather than by strict measure.
- The eggThe method calls for a yolk beaten into the batter and the white whipped and folded in at the end, so one egg is required even though the ingredient list as printed does not name it. Fold the white in immediately before frying; it collapses if the batter stands.
- Batter consistencyA scant cup of flour with 4 tablespoons milk, oil, lemon juice and a yolk gives a very thick, almost paste-like batter, which is what holds the meat together in a spoonful. If it will not drop from the spoon at all, add milk a teaspoon at a time.
- Ambiguous amountsSeveral quantities in the original have lost their fractions, including the volume of chopped veal and the lemon juice. Around 1 1/2 cups of chopped meat, 1 tablespoon oil, 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 to 1 tablespoon lemon juice suit this amount of batter.
- Chop coarse, not fineThe instruction not to chop the veal fine is the hinge of the dish. Pieces about the size of a pea keep the fritter meaty; minced meat turns the interior pasty.
- Frying temperature"Slightly smoking fat" indicates hot but not fierce fat, somewhere around 350-365F on a modern thermometer, though the original gives no figure. Above that the outside browns before the centre heats through.
- Fat depthDeep fat, at least 2 inches, lets the fritters float and brown evenly. Fry in batches of four or five so the temperature does not drop.
- DrainingSoft paper or cheesecloth means what a paper towel means now. Drain on a rack set over paper if you are holding them warm, so the undersides do not steam.
- Yield and servingExpect ten to twelve fritters, enough for three or four as a light main course. A tomato sauce, mushroom sauce or plain lemon wedges all suit them.
Left-over cookery was a distinct genre in Anglo-American household books from the 1880s through the First World War, when refrigeration was uneven and a large roast had to be used up over several days rather than frozen. Batter frying was one of the standard rescues: it re-seasons meat that has lost its juices, adds fat back in, and disguises the fact that the dish is a repeat. The lemon juice here brightens veal, which dulls quickly. The note that chicken may be substituted is typical of the form, where the batter is the recipe and the meat is whatever the cook has on hand.