Hannah Glasse's Veal Olives

History

Hannah Glasse's Veal Olives, from *The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy* (1747), represent a fashionable 18th-century English dish of stuffed, rolled veal escalopes braised in gravy. The term 'olive' derives from the rolled shape resembling an olive or possibly from French *aloiau*. Glasse's version typically featured forcemeat stuffing with herbs, breadcrumbs, and suet, reflecting middling-class tastes for savoury complexity. Such recipes were popular among Georgian households with moderate means, as Glasse aimed to simplify French haute cuisine for English domesticity. Veal olives persisted through Victorian cookery but declined in the 20th century, though the technique of stuffing and rolling meat endures in continental European escalope preparations.

Sources

• Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, 1747
• Jennifer Stead, 'Quizzing Glasse' in Petits Propos Culinaires, 1983
• Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food, 1999
• Ivan Day, 'Hannah Glasse: A Pioneer Food Writer' in Historic Food journal
• Gilly Lehmann, The British Housewife: Cookery books, cooking and society in eighteenth-century Britain, 2003