Adapting recipes for modern tastes is a challenge: we have expectations of what a dish should taste like, what it goes with, how and even when it should be eaten, which are generally culturally learned. There are recipes that are achievable but may not be deemed acceptable on all tables these days – jelly is a good example. It was once revered on the finest society tables but you’d rarely find jelly served anywhere but at children’s party or possibly at yum cha.

Manuscript recipes from the Rouse Hill House and Farm collection for ‘meat soufflé’ and ‘quenelles’ are another example of a once admired dish that might not quite ‘cut the mustard’ on modern tables.

Meat Souffle

Take one pound of any kind of fresh meat, a slice of bread, 2 eggs, a little nutmeg, pepper & salt, a little cayenne enough milk to soak the bread with a piece of butter the size of a walnut – Mince the meat well pound it in a mortar, and the bread soaked with the milk & then the eggs & seasoning mix well together & pass //  through a wire sieve. Steam for an hour to an hour & a half & serve with white sauce poured over it.

Quenelles

Quenelles are made in the same way as soufflé & made into the shape of an egg with two dessert spoons by taking the mixture from one spoon to the other – have ready a stewpan half full of water with a handful of salt in it drop them in separately & boil for ten minutes dish them up on mashed potato & serve with white sauce poured over them & a macedoine of vegetables in the centre

Family connections

The recipes are written on personalised writing paper marked ‘Baroona Whittingham’. Baroona, near Singleton, was the family home of Phoebe Dangar, nee Rouse. Designed by colonial architect, Horbury Hunt who also designed the stables at Rouse Hill House, the homestead still stands today. Families were surprisingly mobile throughout the C19th and the various members of the Rouse family would frequent each others homes, often staying for weeks at a time. A recipe can be a souvenir or touchstone, providing a way of ‘revisiting’ a place, a family member or a memory at a later time.

Lamb in sheep’s clothing?

Essentially these are a very fine-textured meatloaf and meatballs, respectively, served with a white sauce. Rather than baking the meatloaf or pan frying the meatballs as we might today, the meat souffle is steamed and the quenelles boiled in water. With no added flavours specified on the recipe – herbs? salt and pepper? – when recipe tested they were something of a let-down. But someone taking the time to write out the recipes indicates that they were worthy of recording. Perhaps they were served to a guest who was so impressed they wanted to be able to make it themselves at home, or dishes that one of the family or a friend recommended because they liked them.

Many of us would think these minced-based dishes relatively ordinary, perhaps even humble, however the names themselves elevate them above the every-day. Indeed they may have seemed quite refined, as without the benefit of modern mincing equipment they involved quite a bit of work and considerable mess, having to push the meat through a sieve to achieve the fine texture – a job that can be done in mere minutes in a food processor.

‘Dead meat in shampoo’

I was interested to find on a very slick food blog from Denmark, Aorta Food, that poached meatballs served in a velouté-style white sauces are something of a cultural classic in Scandinavia and among their favourite comfort foods. The author of the article, chef at Draggsholm Castle, Claus Henriksen, notes that ‘Granted: Often it looks like dead meat in shampoo’ and proffers a more sophisticated recipe using fermented asparagus instead of the more traditional celery in the sauce.

It seems that quenelles (boiled meatballs) are not lost to history but a celebrated tradition that has been maintained in other parts of the world. As for its larger variation, the meat souffle (steamed meatloaf), I’m yet to find evidence of it surviving elsewhere.