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Paupiettes of Veal, Toscano
Procure six four-ounce slices of veal, cut from the round, flatten to quarter-inch thickness, then pare to even, rectangular shapes. Place trimmings in mortar and pound to a pulp, add two skinned raw sausages, one egg yolk, thoroughly pound again, then rub the pulp through sieve into a bowl. Add half teaspoon finely chopped parsley, three saltspoons salt, one saltspoon cayenne, a half saltspoon grated nutmeg, and mix well; add little by little a half gill cream, sharply stirring while adding it, then spread force over the six slices veal, roll up and tie them with strings. Mix on a plate a tablespoon oil with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Repeatedly turn the paupiettes in seasoning, arrange on a broiler and slowly broil for twenty minutes, lightly turning them once in a while. Remove, untie, place in a baking dish, pour a Finnoise sauce over, then set in oven for fifteen minutes, basting them once in a while, remove and serve.
A straightforward stuffed-and-rolled veal dish written for a cook with a coal range and a mortar. The only real obstacles are the archaic measures, the broiling method, and one sauce name the recipe does not define.
- Saltspoons and gillsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the forcemeat takes 3/4 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne and about 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg. A gill is half a cup, so a half gill of cream is 1/4 cup.
- The mortar and sievePounding the trimmings, sausage meat and yolk to a paste and then forcing it through a sieve is what a food processor now does in a minute. Keep the meat and cream cold and add the cream in a slow stream with the machine running, or the emulsion will break and weep fat during cooking.
- Skinned raw sausagesThis means plain fresh pork sausage with the casing stripped off, not a smoked or cured link. Two average links give roughly 4 to 6 oz of meat; anything heavily seasoned with fennel or sage will overwhelm the nutmeg and cayenne.
- Cutting and flatteningRound of veal is the leg. Ask for six 4 oz cutlets and pound them between plastic sheets to a scant quarter inch, then square them up so they roll evenly. Save every trimming, since the forcemeat depends on them.
- Broiling, adjustedTwenty minutes of "slow" broiling assumes a grid set well above dying coals. A modern overhead broiler at full heat will scorch the outside long before the pork forcemeat is cooked. Use a lower rack position, or grill over medium indirect heat, turning to colour all sides.
- Cook it throughThe filling contains raw pork and raw egg yolk, so the paupiettes need an internal reading of 160F at the centre of the force. The subsequent fifteen minutes in the oven under sauce will finish anything slightly short, but check rather than assume.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. A moderate oven, 350F, is right for the final fifteen minutes; the point is to glaze and heat the sauce, not to cook further.
- Finnoise sauceThe recipe assumes you own the book and can turn to the sauce chapter; the sauce is not defined on this page and the name is not self-explanatory. If you do not have the original formula, a well-made veal velouté with cream, parsley and a little lemon is a reasonable stand-in. Anything sharply tomato-forward will fight the nutmeg.
- Tying and yieldButcher's twine, two turns per roll, removed before saucing as directed. Six paupiettes serve six as a main course with a starch, or three generously.
Paupiette is the French kitchen's word for a thin slice of meat spread with forcemeat and rolled — the same idea Italian cooks call involtini and older French cooks sometimes called alouettes sans tête, larks without heads, a name traditionally explained by the shape of the finished roll. The dish belongs to the classical repertoire of the late nineteenth-century restaurant kitchen, where veal from the round, being lean and bland, was often improved by wrapping it around something richer; the pork sausage and cream here do exactly that work. The International Cook Book is generally credited to Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and the qualifier "Toscano" appears to be one of the book's national or regional tags rather than pointing to any documented Tuscan original. The instruction to broil first and sauce afterwards has a practical logic: colour and firm the roll over fire, then finish it in a sauce that would otherwise scorch.