Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Regency Meatballs

I was just looking through Hannah Glasse's cookbook, which is available online. Her recipe which starts "Now you are to observe ..." basically is for a variation of what we would call "Swedish meatballs". Something tells me regency cooks didn't get their meatballs frozen from IKEA.

The recipe which is very similar to the one for Swedish meatballs from the Joy of Cooking goes something like

1 lb ground veal  (she used a 50% mixture of veal and suet)
"suet herbs" (Don't know what these are for certain, but English cooks use something called "Mixed herbs" today)
Mace
Nutmeg
"a little lemon peel cut very fine"
Salt and Pepper
2 egg yolks

Mix extremely thoroughly. She recommends beating it together in a large stone mortar, but I suspect an electric mixer would work today.

Roll into "little round balls and some long balls" dust with flour and fry. You could also boil them for inclusion with white sauce.

Change the veal for a mixture of pork and beef, ditch the suet herbs, replace the mace with allspice and you have the modern recipe.

A small sample bottle of modern English "mixed herbs" contains Marjoram, Thyme, Parsley and Basil.

By the way, sorry about double posting to Google+. I didn't realize it was automatically posting the pages.

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