Cut veal round-steak into small pieces. Then fry some chopped bacon, 1 onion and 2 cloves of garlic chopped; add the meat; stir well and let all fry a few minutes. Add 1 cup of boiling water and let cook slowly with some parsley and thyme, salt, pepper, until tender. Add a tablespoonful of vinegar. Let boil up; remove from the fire and stir in the yolks of 2 eggs well beaten. Serve hot with toast.
A one-pan veal fricassee finished with an egg-yolk liaison. The recipe assumes you know the proportions, so the quantities below are the ones the method implies.
- The hinge: the yolksOnce the yolks go in, the pan must be off the heat and stay off. Boiling after that point scrambles them and the sauce breaks into curds. Beat the yolks with a spoonful of the hot liquid first, then stir the mixture back in and let the residual heat thicken it.
- Unstated quantityNo weight is given for the veal. About 1 1/2 lb of round steak, cut in 1/2-inch pieces, suits 1 cup of water and 2 yolks and feeds three to four.
- Veal round steakSold as veal cutlet or leg steak, and often thin and expensive. Veal shoulder cut into cubes behaves better in a slow braise and costs less; boneless pork shoulder or turkey thigh substitutes reasonably in flavour if not in colour.
- "Until tender"Round is lean and turns tough before it turns tender, so expect 45 minutes to an hour at a bare simmer, lid on, topping up with a little water if the pan goes dry. There should be a few tablespoons of liquid left to thicken.
- BaconPeriod bacon was likely saltier and often smokier than most supermarket bacon. Two or three ounces, chopped, is enough to render fat for the onion; unsmoked pancetta or salt pork is closer to the intended flavour. Salt at the end, after tasting.
- VinegarA tablespoon of a sharp red wine or cider vinegar. Add it before the yolks and let it boil once so the raw edge cooks off, exactly as written.
- HerbsA few sprigs of parsley and one of thyme, tied or added whole and fished out before serving, gives cleaner flavour than chopped herbs left in for an hour.
- ServingThe recipe says only 'with toast': plain toast under or beside the hash, to catch the sauce. It goes together quickly enough that the toast should be made while the yolks are being beaten.
"Hash" here has nothing to do with the American breakfast skillet of cooked leftovers; it renders the French sense of a dish of small pieces of meat stewed in a little liquid, in the family of the fricassée and the sauté de veau. The finish is the yolks beaten in off the fire to bind the cooking liquid, a technique cookbooks of the period called a liaison, with a tablespoon of vinegar that keeps a rich, egg-thickened sauce from tasting flat. Veal was a common meat for such dishes because it is mild and takes on whatever the pan gives it. Books like this one parcelled out a year of dinners a day at a time with a country attached to each; the recipes are usually short on quantities.