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Glaze for Cold Hams, Tongues, Etc
Take some clear, strong stock, made from the bones of a shin of beef or a knuckle of veal, without either salt, pepper, or herbs, and quite free from fat or sediment. Put it into a copper stewpan, with a little whole pepper, and let it boil quickly until it is as thick as syrup. It must be closely watched, and, as soon as it begins to thicken, stirred without ceasing. Keep trying a little on a plate, and when it sets like jam it is done enough; it must be boiled until it will do this. If a light-coloured glaze is wanted, more veal than beef should be used. Time, boil as quickly as possible till the stock begins to thicken, then put it into another and smaller saucepan, and simmer gently until it jellies. On the average, one pound of meat will produce an ounce of glaze.
This is glace de viande — stock reduced until it sets like rubber jelly — used as a brushed-on coating for cold meats and as a flavour concentrate. Nothing about the method has changed, but the vessel, the timing and the storage all deserve a note.
- Leave the salt out, and mean itThis is the hinge. Reducing a gallon of stock to a cup concentrates everything in it, salt included, so a stock seasoned to taste becomes inedible as glaze. Season the dish you finally use it in, never the glaze itself.
- The copper stewpanThe book specifies a copper stewpan; copper pans of the period were as a rule tinned inside. Use a heavy stainless or copper-core saucepan instead. Heavy base matters more than metal, because the last stage scorches in seconds.
- Change to a smaller panThe instruction to transfer the thickening stock to a smaller saucepan is not fussiness. A shallow film in a wide pan burns; moving to a narrower pan keeps enough depth to stir and gives you control over the final few minutes.
- How long it actually takesExpect a long session for a large quantity of stock, most of it unattended fast boiling, then a final stretch of constant stirring; the book gives no clock time and tells you to judge by the plate test. Skim and strain through muslin before you start — the recipe itself requires the stock to be 'quite free from fat or sediment', both of which taste bitter once concentrated.
- The cold-plate testThe plate test -- The book's test is a little tried on a plate: it is done when it sets like jam, not merely thickens. Hot glaze always looks thinner than it is, which is why the book insists on testing rather than timing.
- YieldOne pound of meat to one ounce of glaze is the book's own figure. On that reckoning a shin of beef and a veal knuckle, eight to ten pounds of meat and bone, return something on the order of eight to ten ounces of finished glaze.
- Keeping and using itSet glaze keeps several weeks covered in the refrigerator and indefinitely frozen; pour it into an ice-cube tray and use a cube at a time. To coat cold ham or tongue, warm it over hot water until just brushable and apply in thin layers on a dry surface, letting each set before the next.
- Light versus darkThe veal-for-pallor note holds. For a darker, glossier finish, roast the beef bones first; for the pale glaze wanted on cold tongue, use raw veal bones and skim diligently.
Glaze of this kind is one of the load-bearing preparations of nineteenth-century professional cookery, standing behind Carême's and later Escoffier's kitchens as the concentrated form in which meat flavour could be kept on hand without refrigeration — reduce a stock far enough and it is too dense in gelatine and too poor in free water to spoil quickly. Cassell's treats it not as a made dish but as a raw material: a jar of glaze thinned a spoonful at a time enriched sauces, and brushed on cold it gave the mirror-brown surface expected of a ham or a boiled tongue on a Victorian buffet, where cold joints were served whole and judged on appearance. The sixteen-to-one loss the book records — one pound of meat to one ounce of glaze — is also a quiet reminder of how cheap bones and how expensive labour and fuel were in a household that could afford a cook to stand over a pan for an afternoon.