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VEAL (a la Bourgeoise)
Take about three pounds of the fillet, loin, or neck of veal. Cut it into neat pieces, and fry these in a little butter till they are brightly browned on both sides. Add two slices of lean bacon, three carrots, three onions (each with a clove stuck in it), a large bunch of herbs, a blade of mace, and pepper and salt to taste. Pour over all as much boiling stock or water as will barely cover the ingredients, and simmer all together very gently until the meat is done enough. Take it out, skim the sauce, strain it, and boil quickly to reduce it; then add a spoonful of sugar browning to colour it, and, if liked. A little tomato sauce and ketchup to impart flavour. Put the meat on a dish, trim the carrots to a neat shape and place them round it, pour a part of the gravy over the veal, and serve the rest in a tureen. A pint of fresh green peas and two pounds or more of new potatoes should be cooked separately, and served with the veal. If liked, the veal, instead of being cut up into pieces, may be evenly larded in the grain of the meat with strips of fat bacon, and dressed whole. If a calf's foot is boiled with the veal it will much improve the gravy. Time to simmer the veal, two hours if it is cut up, three hours if in one piece. Probable cost, 4s. to 5s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A straightforward braise dressed up in the French manner, and the method still works. Most of the adjustments concern ingredients that have quietly changed since the book was written.
- Sugar browningThis is caramel colouring: sugar cooked dark, almost to bitterness, then let down with a little water and bottled. A teaspoon of commercial gravy browning does the same job, or make your own from a tablespoon of sugar taken to a deep mahogany in a dry pan and slaked with hot water off the heat.
- KetchupIn a book of this period ketchup means mushroom or walnut ketchup, a thin dark salty condiment, not the sweet tomato sauce of today. Mushroom ketchup is still sold; a splash of Worcestershire sauce or soy is a closer substitute than tomato ketchup, which would push the dish sweet.
- Blade of maceThe lacy outer covering of nutmeg, sold whole as flat blades. One blade is roughly a quarter to half a teaspoon of ground mace, and the ground form should go in late so it does not turn dusty over two hours.
- Bunch of herbsA bouquet garni in all but name: parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf tied with string so they can be pulled out before the sauce is strained.
- Simmering timesTwo to three hours suits neck, which is well worked and full of connective tissue. Fillet and loin are lean and will be dry and stringy long before that. If you use them, an hour to ninety minutes is plenty; reserve the long braise for neck, shoulder or shin.
- Calf's footAdded for gelatin, which gives the reduced gravy its gloss and body. It is an order-ahead item from a butcher now. A split veal knuckle or a couple of veal bones does much the same, or add a little powdered gelatin to the finished sauce.
- LardingThreading strips of fat bacon through a whole joint with a larding needle keeps lean veal moist. Modern equivalents are barding the joint with sheets of fat or wrapping it in bacon rashers before browning.
- Oven or hobThe original assumes a pan on the range. A covered casserole in a low oven, around 325F, holds a steadier heat than a stovetop simmer and needs less attention.
- Yield and costFive or six servings, as stated. The four to five shillings is a late-nineteenth-century British price and carries no useful modern meaning.
A la bourgeoise is one of the standard tags of nineteenth-century French kitchen French, and it means what it says: the household style, as opposed to the elaborate garnishes of the restaurant or the grand house. In practice it is generally taken to signal meat braised with its vegetables, bacon and onions studded with cloves, the whole served with the carrots arranged around the dish. Cassell's, which was compiled for middle-class British households with a cook rather than a brigade, is full of these borrowed French labels attached to methods an English kitchen already knew how to do. The instruction to boil a calf's foot with the meat points to a period habit now largely lost: gelatin came from bones and feet in the pot, not a packet, and a gravy that set to a jelly when cold was often said to be the proof of a well-made braise. The peas and new potatoes served alongside date the dish to early summer, when veal, peas and new potatoes all came together in the market.