Roast Veal
Take a loin of veal; prepare a stuffing as you would for roast turkey; fill the flat with the stuffing; secure it firmly on to the loin; rub the veal with salt, pepper and a little butter; put it into a pan with a little water. Let it cook until thoroughly done, basting often. When done, remove the threads before sending to the table. Thicken the gravy with a little flour.
A plain nineteenth-century roast that assumes you know how to bone and roll a loin and how to judge a coal-fired oven by hand. Two things need spelling out: the oven temperature and the fact that stuffing packed against meat has to reach a higher temperature than the meat itself.
- The "flat"Most likely the thin flap of flank and belly left attached to an untrimmed loin. Modern veal loin comes trimmed close, so ask for the flap left on, or buy a boned breast or shoulder, which is cheaper and easily suited to stuffing.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. Roast at 325F for a stuffed joint; the stuffing needs time to heat through and a hotter oven will dry the lean veal before the centre catches up. A brief 425F start for 15 minutes gives colour if you want it.
- The hinge: two temperatures, not one"Thoroughly done" for veal is 145-150F at the thickest part, rested 10 minutes. But the stuffing, sitting against raw meat, must reach 165F. Check both with a probe; the stuffing is usually the slower of the two.
- TimingRoughly 25-30 minutes per pound for a stuffed rolled joint, but weigh it after stuffing and trust the thermometer rather than the clock. A 4 lb rolled shoulder runs around 2 hours.
- ThreadsThe recipe means the string used to tie the stuffed flap in place; butcher's twine at short intervals does the job. Snip and pull it out before carving as instructed.
- The little waterA shallow film in the pan, replenished as it evaporates, keeps the drippings from scorching, since veal gives up very little fat of its own. That leanness is also the practical reason for frequent basting.
- StuffingA bread stuffing of the period typically means stale breadcrumbs, butter, onion, salt, pepper and sage or summer savoury; check the book's own turkey recipe for its version. Keep it on the loose side; packed tight it sets into a solid plug and heats through slowly.
- GravySkim the fat, whisk a tablespoon of flour into a little of it off the heat, return to the pan with stock or water and simmer two or three minutes to cook out the raw flour taste.
- YieldA 4 lb stuffed joint serves six to eight, and the leftovers slice cold with the stuffing running through them.
Veal was a city meat and a spring meat, tied to the dairy calendar: surplus bull calves were sold off young, and the resulting pale, lean flesh needed the fat and seasoning that a stuffing and a buttered surface supply. The instruction to "prepare a stuffing as you would for roast turkey" is characteristic of nineteenth-century household books, which were written for readers who already had the standard bread stuffing by heart and expected cross-references rather than repetition. Stuffed and rolled loin or breast of veal has a long life in English and French cookery under various names, and it survives in Italian kitchens, where such a roll may simply be described as vitello arrotolato; the logic is the same everywhere, which is to give a dry cut something moist and fatty at its centre and to turn an awkward flap of belly meat into a neat carving shape.