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Veal and Rice Soup
Take about four pounds of the knuckle of veal. Break up the bones, and put them with the meat into a small stock-pot with a gallon of stock made from bones, or water, and any trimmings of meat or poultry that may be at hand. The knuckle-bone of a ham or a little scalded and scraped bacon-rind will be a great improvement. Let the liquor boil, skim well, and throw into it two carrots, a turnip, two onions, each stuck with one clove, a few sticks of celery or a little celery-seed, and pepper and salt. Simmer the stock very gently indeed for three hours. Take out the meat, and put it aside till wanted. Strain the liquor, and pour it into a smaller saucepan with half a pound of half-boiled rice. Let it simmer until the rice is quite tender. Cut the veal into pieces convenient for serving, let them become hot in the liquor. Pour the soup, with the rice and veal, into a tureen, and serve very hot. Time, four hours. Probable cost, knuckle of veal, 5d. to 7d. per pound. Sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A clear-broth soup built on gelatine from a veal shank, thickened only by the rice cooked in it. Nothing here is difficult, but two details in the original will trip up a modern cook: the imperial gallon and the instruction to add rice that is already half cooked.
- Knuckle of vealThis is the shank, the same cut sold sawn across as osso buco. Ask for it whole or in two or three pieces, bone in; the bone is doing as much work as the meat. Four pounds bone-in yields roughly a pound of usable meat.
- A gallon of stockAn imperial gallon is 160 fl oz, about 4.5 litres, roughly three-quarters of a litre more than a US gallon. In a domestic pot that is a great deal of liquid for four pounds of veal; three to four litres gives a soup with more flavour and still serves eight.
- "Simmer very gently indeed"The hinge of the whole thing. Veal stock that boils turns cloudy and greasy, because the fat emulsifies into the liquid rather than rising. Keep it at a bare shiver, with the surface barely moving, for the full three hours and skim as scum collects.
- Ham knuckle and bacon rindBoth are salt-cured, so hold back on salt until the stock is strained and tasted. Unsmoked bacon rind or a piece of pancetta rind is probably the safer choice; heavily smoked bacon will dominate.
- Half-boiled riceParboil long-grain rice in salted water for about five minutes, drain, then finish it in the strained broth for another ten to twelve. Draining off the first water carries away some surface starch, which helps keep the soup from turning to porridge.
- Half a pound of riceAbout 225 g, a generous cup and a bit. It will swell considerably; if the soup is to sit or be reheated the rice will keep drinking the broth, so cook it separately and add it to each bowl if you plan on leftovers.
- Celery-seedA permitted substitute in the original, and still useful out of season, but a teaspoon is ample for this volume. It is far more assertive than stalks and turns bitter if overdone.
- Returning the vealThe meat only needs to be warmed through, not cooked again. Slip the pieces into the finished soup for a few minutes off a hard heat; longer and the shank meat, already three hours in liquid, shreds into fibres.
- Cost and yieldThe pence-per-pound figure is pre-decimal British currency and belongs to the book's period, not to any modern price. Eight to ten servings is accurate if this is a first course.
Its logic is thoroughly Victorian: one cheap, gelatinous cut produces both the broth and the meat for the dish, and the bones that came with it produce the foundation stock. Veal knuckle was a common component of nineteenth-century British stockpots because its connective tissue dissolves into gelatine, giving a broth that sets to a jelly when cold, a quality cooks of the period valued. The pairing of veal with rice appears in English cookery books of the era under various names. The suggested ham bone or bacon rind is a frugal touch of the same kind: nothing that carried flavour was thrown away.