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Gravy for Minced Veal, Cheap
Put the trimmings and bones of the veal into a saucepan, with as much water as will cover them. With a pint of water put a small onion, half a tea-spoonful of finely-minced lemon-rind, a small sprig of thyme, a blade of mace, and half a tea-spoonful of salt. Stew gently for an hour, then strain the gravy, thicken it with a little flour and butter, and add a table-spoonful of cream or milk. The flavour may be varied by the addition of mushroom or walnut ketchup, or the cream may be omitted, and the juice of half a lemon substituted for it. Probable cost, 4d. per pint. Sufficient for three-quarters of a pint.
A thrift sauce built from the scraps left after cutting veal for mincing. The instructions assume you already know how to make a white roux, so the useful work here is in the measurements and the two flavourings that no longer sit on most shelves.
- The quantities are per pint"As much water as will cover them" governs the pot size, but the seasoning list is pegged to a pint (20 fl oz British, about 2 1/2 US cups). Scale the onion, lemon rind, thyme, mace and salt up or down against the actual volume of water you use.
- YieldThree-quarters of a pint finished, roughly 1 3/4 US cups after the hour of stewing and straining.
- A blade of maceMace is the lacy aril around the nutmeg seed, sold whole in curved "blades" and pulled out with the other aromatics at straining. About 1/4 teaspoon of ground mace substitutes, though it will cloud the gravy slightly.
- Thicken with beurre manieThickening -- "a little flour and butter" is unspecified: it can be read either as a cooked roux or as equal weights of butter and flour kneaded together cold and whisked into the hot strained stock. Around 1/2 oz of each per 3/4 pint gives a light coating sauce; simmer two or three minutes afterwards to lose the raw flour taste.
- Walnut and mushroom ketchupBoth are thin, dark, salty steepings rather than anything resembling tomato ketchup. Walnut ketchup is still made by a few British firms; mushroom ketchup likewise. A teaspoon of either, or of Worcestershire sauce, gets close.
- Cream or lemon, not bothThe recipe offers them as alternatives. Acid can curdle a hot dairy sauce, so if you take the lemon route add it off the heat at the very end and leave the cream out.
- Keep it at a bare trembleAn hour of gentle stewing extracts gelatine from the veal bones and gives the sauce body; a rolling boil emulsifies the fat and turns it cloudy. Skim the surface once or twice as it cooks.
- Lemon rind"Finely-minced lemon-rind" means the yellow zest only. Any white pith carried in will steep bitter over a full hour.
- The costingFourpence a pint is a Victorian price and appears throughout this book as a household budgeting aid. It has no modern equivalent worth calculating.
Cassell's belongs to the era of the large joint and its afterlife: veal was bought as a whole cut, the good meat minced for a made dish, and the trimmings, bones and skin turned back into the sauce that dressed it. The word "cheap" in the title is doing real work, distinguishing this from the richer gravies elsewhere in the book. Veal bones were prized for exactly the quality this recipe exploits without naming it, the gelatine that gives a light stock texture in the mouth, which is why they underpin the classic French white stocks as well. The pairing of mace and lemon rind with veal is an old English habit, found in eighteenth-century cookery books. The costing line, given after most recipes in the dictionary, suggests a book aimed at a household budgeting for its table as much as at the cook at the stove.