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Veal Pot Pie with Baked Dumplings
Cut two pounds of veal from the leg in one-inch cubes. Add a fourth-inch thick slice of salt pork, cut in very small cubes. Cover with boiling water. Add one small carrot sliced, one stalk celery broken in pieces, and two slices onion. When half done add onehalf tablespoon salt. Cook until meat is tender. Remove the meat and strain the broth; thicken broth with flour diluted with cold water. Put meat into a baking dish and pour over enough of the thickened broth to barely cover the meat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Make a soft dough by mixing and sifting one and one-half cups pastry flour, one-half teaspoon salt, two and one-half teaspoons baking powder; rub in three tablespoons Cottolene with tips of fingers, then add milk enough to make a soft dough and drop by tablespoonfuls upon meat - (dumplings should set upon the meat and not sink into gravy) close together to cover the surface. Bake thirty minutes in a hot oven. Serve remaining gravy in a sauceboat.
A stewed veal filling under a dropped biscuit crust, baked rather than steamed. The instructions are sound; only the shortening and a few measurements need translating.
- CottoleneA branded shortening sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company, made from cottonseed oil worked with beef suet, long discontinued. Substitute an equal amount of vegetable shortening, or lard for a richer crust; three tablespoons is 1.5 fluid ounces.
- A hot ovenNo temperature is given; read a hot oven as roughly 400-450F. The dough needs the initial blast to rise and brown before the gravy beneath soaks it; a moderate oven gives you pale, sodden dumplings.
- Pastry flourSofter and lower in protein than modern all-purpose. Plain all-purpose works, but use a light hand mixing; substituting a tablespoon of cornstarch for a tablespoon of flour per cup moves it in the right direction.
- The hinge: dumplings sit on topThe parenthetical warning is the whole technique. Ladle in only enough thickened broth to barely cover the meat, and drop the dough onto the meat itself. Dough dropped into liquid poaches instead of baking and turns gluey underneath.
- Thickening the brothNo proportion is given, and no water measure either. About two tablespoons flour slaked in cold water per cup of strained broth gives a gravy that coats a spoon; thicken whatever you have and reserve the surplus for the sauceboat.
- Cooking the vealCubed leg veal simmers tender in 45 to 60 minutes at a bare bubble. Keep it below a rolling boil, which toughens the fibres and clouds the broth you are about to strain.
- Salt porkA quarter-inch slice off a slab is roughly 2 oz. Salt pork varies in saltiness, so hold back on the half tablespoon of salt until you taste the broth.
- YieldServes four to six from a two-quart baking dish. The topping covers the surface in a single close layer, so choose the dish for its width rather than depth.
52 Sunday Dinners (1913) was written by Elizabeth O. Hiller and published by the N. K. Fairbank Company, makers of Cottolene, a cottonseed-oil shortening promoted as a cleaner, cheaper alternative to lard. That accounts for the branded fat appearing in a recipe that otherwise calls for nothing but pantry staples; the book is a year of menus built around persuading American cooks to change what they baked with. The dish itself is the older Anglo-American pot pie, which in nineteenth-century usage meant meat stewed with a crust or dumplings rather than anything resembling a pastry pie, and veal was a natural choice, cheap and mild enough to carry salt pork and root vegetables. Baking the dumplings instead of steaming them under a lid gives the browned biscuit top that came to define the American version.