Season 3 pounds of veal with salt, pepper and lemon-juice. Put a few slices of bacon in a stew-pan; when hot, add the veal. Cover and let brown a few minutes; then add 2 carrots and 1 onion sliced thin, some thyme and mace; pour over 1 cup of hot water. Cover and let cook slowly until tender. Thicken with flour mixed with ½ cup of milk. Add chopped parsley; season to taste and serve with baked potatoes.
A plain braise that depends almost entirely on the liquid level and the pace of the simmer. The original gives no times, so the judgment is yours.
- Cut of vealUse boneless shoulder or breast cut into 1½-inch cubes; leg or cutlet meat will go dry long before it turns tender. Three pounds of trimmed shoulder feeds six.
- TimingExpect 1½ to 2 hours at a bare simmer, covered, until a cube crushes against the side of the pan with light pressure. Rushing it at a rolling boil is what makes stewed veal stringy.
- The water is not enoughThe water is thin -- one cup may not carry 3 lb of meat through a long simmer if the lid is loose. Check every 30 minutes and add hot water or light stock if the pan threatens to go dry, bearing in mind that the vegetables release liquid as well.
- "Stew-pan"A heavy lidded pot on the stovetop, not a baking dish. A 5-quart Dutch oven is the modern equivalent, and it can go into a 325F oven instead if you prefer unattended cooking.
- BaconBacon of this period was often more heavily salted and smoked than modern supermarket bacon. Two or three slices of streaky bacon, chopped, rendered over medium heat until the fat runs, gives you the frying medium; lift the bits out if you want them crisp for the finish.
- MaceThe outer covering of nutmeg, sold ground or in blades. A quarter teaspoon ground is plenty for this quantity; more turns the sauce medicinal. Nutmeg substitutes at half the amount.
- The flour and milk thickeningWhisk 2 to 3 tablespoons flour into the ½ cup of cold milk until smooth, then stir it into the simmering pot in a thin stream. Adding it as a lump of paste guarantees flour knots, and the sauce needs a few minutes of gentle cooking afterward to lose its raw taste.
- Browning"A few minutes" covered will steam rather than brown. Sear the veal uncovered in batches until it takes color, then cover once the liquid goes in.
- ServingBaked potatoes as directed, or buttered noodles, which absorb the milk-thickened sauce better.
This is one of a year's worth of dishes assigned a nationality by the compiler, and the label "Dutch" here rests mostly on the combination of veal, mace and a milk-thickened sauce. Mace and nutmeg came cheaply through the Dutch spice trade, which is generally credited with the persistent Netherlands taste for nutmeg in savory cooking. Books of this kind offered a dish a day with a foreign flag attached; the recipes were usually adapted well past the point of authenticity, but they gave middle-class cooks a reason to vary a repertoire that otherwise ran to roasts and boiled dinners. The finishing with flour slaked in cold milk rather than a butter roux is the more domestic of the two techniques.