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Blanquette of Veal
2 tablespoons Crisco, 2 pounds fillet of veal, 1/2 cup cream, 4 tablespoons flour, 1 large onion, 1 carrot, seasoning, 12 preserved mushrooms, and 12 whole peppers. Cut veal into square pieces, put them into stewpan with enough cold water to cover, bring it to boil, and skim well; add salt to taste, onion cut in quarters, carrot, whole peppers; cook gently 1 hour. Take up meat, strain stock, and measure off 1 pint. Melt Crisco in stewpan, stir in flour, add stock; boil and skim; cook for a few minutes. Add mushrooms, cut in slices, and cream; put in pieces of veal; make hot, but do not boil again; season nicely, dish up, sprinkle little chopped parsley over, and serve.
A plain white veal stew from a Crisco-sponsored menu book, written for cooks who already knew what a blanquette should look like. Two or three details need translating, and one instruction carries the whole dish.
- Keep it whiteNothing here is browned. The fat and flour are cooked only long enough to lose their raw taste — a minute or two, no colour — and the meat goes into cold water rather than a hot pan.
- Do not boil after the creamThe final instruction is the hinge. Once cream goes in, hold the pan below a simmer; a hard boil risks splitting the sauce and tightening the veal after it has already cooked an hour.
- CriscoCrisco was new when this book was written and the book exists to sell it. Two tablespoons of any neutral solid fat works, and unsalted butter is the traditional and better choice for a white sauce.
- Fillet of vealIn this period "fillet" means the leg — modern veal round or top round. It is lean and can go stringy; boneless shoulder or breast, which carries more collagen, gives a silkier result and may want 15–30 minutes longer than the stated hour.
- Preserved mushroomsBottled or canned mushrooms in brine, sold in this period. Substitute about 8 oz of fresh button mushrooms, sliced and simmered briefly in a little of the stock so they do not tint the sauce grey.
- Whole peppersWhole black peppercorns, twelve of them. Straining the stock, as the recipe directs, takes them out.
- Measuring the stockOne pint is two cups. Two pounds of veal barely covered with water will give you more than that; save the rest, and if the pint looks thin, reduce it before it meets the roux.
- YieldServes four generously, six as part of a larger dinner. Rice or plain boiled potatoes are the usual accompaniment.
- Section headingThe "Eggs" heading comes from the digitised source, not from the dish — there are no eggs in it. Many older blanquette recipes do finish the sauce with egg yolks beaten into the cream, which may explain how the two got filed together.
Blanquette comes from French blanc, white, and describes a method rather than a specific dish: meat gently poached in its own broth, the broth thickened into a pale sauce, no browning at any stage. Veal was the classic choice because it stays light in colour and its bones and connective tissue give a stock with body. American cookbooks of the 1900s and 1910s carried a good deal of this simplified French repertoire, and it is worth noting where this version appears — A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, the hydrogenated vegetable shortening they introduced in 1911. That is why butter, which any French kitchen would have used here, has been quietly replaced in the ingredient list. The book's real subject is the fat; the blanquette is the vehicle.