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Polish Buck
Take a slice about an inch and a half in thickness from a fillet of veal, beat it with a steak-beater or rolling-pin, then with a wooden skewer make holes in it three-quarters the depth of the slice. Cut some fat bacon into thick strips, and some boneless sardines or anchovies into thin ones. Fill the holes with these, then rub the meat over with some sliced onion and next with a clove of garlic; sprinkle with half a tea-spoonful of grated lemon-peel, the same of salt, and a little white pepper and cayenne, with the slightest soupcon of ground mint. Roll the veal up, sausage-shape, tie it with tape, and brush it over with clarified butter, then lay it in a stewpan with hot butter until it is delicately browned. Put in a gill each of veal stock and milk, and cook gently for two to two and a half hours. Then leave till cold, unbind, and serve in slices, as a luncheon or breakfast dish, garnished with salad according to taste. Probable cost, 2s. 6d.
A larded, rolled and braised veal roll, cooked slowly and served cold in slices. The recipe assumes a butcher who will cut what you ask for and a cook who knows how to lard.
- The hinge: cook it gently, cool it wholeThe liquid should barely tremble for the full two to two and a half hours; a boil will squeeze the veal dry and split the roll. Letting it go completely cold before untying is what allows it to slice cleanly, so cool it in the pan with its juices.
- A gillHalf a cup, or 5 fl oz in British measure. A gill each of stock and milk is only about half a pint of liquid in total, so use a snug-fitting pan with a lid and check it has not cooked dry.
- The cut"Fillet of veal" in Victorian British butchery means the top of the leg, not the tenderloin. Ask for a thick slice of veal top round or leg, about 1.5 inches, and pound it evenly before you make the skewer holes.
- Larding without a needleA wooden skewer pushed three-quarters through and packed with bacon and anchovy is old-fashioned larding done with kitchen tools. A larding needle or a thin sharpening steel does the same job faster; chill the bacon strips first so they stay firm going in.
- SaltBetween the bacon, the anchovies or sardines, and the half teaspoon of added salt, this can easily be over-seasoned; cut the added salt if you use anchovies.
- TapeCotton kitchen tape was used for tying joints. Butcher's twine at one-inch intervals does the job; nothing coated or synthetic.
- Ground mintDried mint, ground fine. "The slightest soupcon" means a pinch — an eighth of a teaspoon at most, meant to sit behind the lemon peel rather than announce itself.
- Yield and servingServe at cool room temperature, cut in slices, with a sharp dressed salad as the recipe suggests.
The name is the puzzle here. Cassell's attached national labels freely and not always accurately, and "buck" in nineteenth-century English cookery usually turns up in the rarebit family rather than attached to veal. What the dish actually resembles is zrazy zawijane, the Polish rolled and stuffed beef or veal parcels braised slowly in a little stock — a resemblance worth noting rather than a documented lineage. The technique underneath it is older and pan-European: larding a lean cut with fat bacon to baste it from within, sharpening it with salt fish, then braising and pressing it to be eaten cold. Cold sliced meats of this kind were the backbone of the Victorian breakfast and luncheon table, where a joint cooked one day was expected to appear, garnished and sliced thin, on the next.