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Gravy, Veal, for White Sauce
Put one pound of lean ham at the bottom of a saucepan, with two pounds of the neck, or the fleshy part of the knuckle of veal, cut into two or three pieces. Cover them with a quarter of a pint of good broth, and boil, rather quickly at first, and afterwards very gently, until the meat begins to glaze. Pierce the meat once or twice with a skewer, and shake the pan frequently to prevent burning. When the glaze is lightly brown, add, gradually, two pints of good broth; and simmer gently for two hours. If it is wished to flavour the gravy, an onion and a bunch of parsley may be stewed with the broth; but if it is intended to be put aside for future use, neither vegetables nor seasoning should be added. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for a pint and a half of gravy.
This is a foundation, not a finished dish: a concentrated veal-and-ham stock for building velouté and other white sauces. Everything depends on the glazing step in the first stage.
- The hinge: glaze, don't brownThe meat is meant to cook down in a very small amount of liquid until the juices reduce to a sticky film on the pan bottom — lightly brown, no darker. Because this is destined for white sauce, real browning will tint the finished gravy and defeat the purpose. Keep the heat low once the liquid has mostly gone and shake often.
- Imperial measuresThe pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz. A quarter of a pint is about 5 fl oz (2/3 cup) and two pints is 40 fl oz (about 5 cups). The yield, a pint and a half, is 30 fl oz — about 3 1/2 cups.
- "Good broth"Here this means an unseasoned light meat stock, not commercial bouillon. Unsalted homemade chicken or veal stock works; plain water will give a thinner but perfectly usable result, since the point of the recipe is to extract from the meat itself.
- Veal cutsNeck and knuckle are gelatin-rich and largely gone from retail counters. Ask for veal shank (osso buco cut, bones and all) or breast. Two pounds bone-in is right; if using boneless, add a cracked veal or chicken bone for body.
- The ham, and saltA pound of lean ham to two pounds of veal is a lot of cured meat, and modern hams are wetter and often sweeter than Victorian ones. Use unsmoked gammon or prosciutto ends, and add no salt at any stage — you season the sauce later, after reduction.
- Skim and strainSkim during the two-hour simmer and strain through a fine sieve or damp cloth. For white sauce the stock should be clear and pale; chill it and lift off the solid fat before use.
- Keeping itThe instruction to leave out onion, parsley and seasoning when storing is sound — aromatics shorten its life and limit what you can do with it later. Refrigerate no more than three or four days, or freeze in half-cup portions; it will set to a firm jelly, which is a sign you got the extraction right.
- Cost"Probable cost, 3s." is three shillings, a substantial sum for a sauce base.
White sauces built on veal stock are the backbone of nineteenth-century English cookery as it absorbed French practice: veal contributes gelatin and body with almost no colour or assertive flavour, which is exactly what a velouté or a fricassee sauce wants. The two-stage method here — reduce a little liquid to a glaze on the meat, then dilute and simmer — is a domestic trick of concentration rather than the professional glace de viande, which reduces a finished stock to a syrup; but the caramelised film is what gives the finished gravy its depth without needing long browning. Such a gravy is unseasoned and ready to be turned in several directions, in the way a modern kitchen keeps stock in the freezer. Veal's retreat from ordinary butchers' shops is the main reason recipes like this one now read as remote.