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Veal, Blanquette of, Made from Fresh Meat
Take from two to three pounds of the breast of veal. Cut it into pieces the size of a walnut, put these into a small saucepan, and pour upon them as much boiling stock or water as will cover them. Let the liquor boil up, and skim it. Throw into it two onions each stuck with a clove, two carrots, and a large bunch of sweet herbs. Add a little pepper and salt. Cover the saucepan closely, and simmer the meat gently for an hour. Drain it, and put it aside for a short time. Strain the gravy, thicken with white thickening, and let it boil, stirring occasionally till it coats the spoon. Let it cool a minute, then beat the yolks of two eggs in a bowl, mix with them a spoonful of the gravy, and add the rest gradually. Put the pieces of veal into a small saucepan, strain the gravy upon them, and let them remain in it gently simmering until they are heated through, but the sauce must not boil or it will curdle. Add a table-spoonful of scalded and chopped parsley. Mix and serve. Time to simmer the meat, about an hour. Probable cost, breast of veal, 10d. per pound. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A classic white stew, and the whole dish turns on the last step: once the egg yolks go in, the sauce must never boil. Everything before that is straightforward gentle simmering.
- The liaison is the hingeYolks tempered with hot gravy will set into curds above roughly 180F/82C. Keep the pan at a bare shiver, stir constantly, and pull it off the heat the moment the veal is hot through.
- White thickeningThe book's term for butter and flour cooked together without letting them colour, i.e. a white roux. Roughly equal weights, about 1 oz of each, will thicken a pint of stock to coating consistency. A beurre manié whisked in off the boil does much the same job.
- Breast of vealBone-in and fatty, sold today mostly by butchers rather than supermarkets. Two to three pounds on the bone yields considerably less meat than the same weight of boneless shoulder; if you substitute boneless veal shoulder or breast, buy about 2 lb.
- Pieces the size of a walnutRoughly 1 to 1 1/4 inch cubes. Larger pieces will not be tender in the hour given; smaller ones shred.
- Sweet herbsA bouquet garni: parsley stalks, thyme, a bay leaf, tied so it can be lifted out. "A large bunch" here means a generous handful for two to three pounds of meat.
- Scalded parsleyDipping chopped parsley briefly in boiling water and draining it sets the colour and softens the raw bite. It takes seconds, not minutes.
- Cooking timeAn hour suits veal breast cut small, but check with a fork; older animals and thicker pieces may want 90 minutes. The meat should yield without falling apart, since it gets reheated in the sauce.
- Finishing and servingThe book's five or six portions are modest by modern standards; treat it as about four servings with rice or plain boiled potatoes. A squeeze of lemon at the end, common in French blanquette, lifts a sauce that is otherwise rich.
Blanquette de veau is one of the ragoûts blancs of French cookery: meat cooked without browning so the finished dish stays pale, then bound with a liaison of egg yolk and, in many French versions, cream. The name derives from blanc, white. Cassell's title appears to distinguish this version from blanquettes made with cold cooked veal, a way of using up leftovers, which is presumably why it specifies "made from fresh meat." Breast was among the cheaper veal cuts, and the long gentle simmer suits its connective tissue. The dish's appearance in a British household dictionary reflects the reach of French technique in the middle-class English kitchen of the period, though whether the absence of cream and lemon here represents a deliberate English adaptation is not something the recipe tells us.