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Veal, Blanquette of, with Cucumbers
Cut some cold veal into neat pieces about the size of a walnut and a quarter of an inch thick. Pare and quarter a large cucumber, and cut it into lengths of half an inch. Sprinkle a little salt upon these, and cover them with vinegar. Let them remain for half an hour. Drain them well, and dry them with a soft cloth. Dissolve a slice of fresh butter in a bright stewpan, and add a pinch of grated nutmeg and a small piece of sugar. Put in the slices of cucumber, and let them simmer gently till tender. Drain off the butter, pour some white sauce upon the cucumber, add the pieces of veal, and let all simmer gently together till the meat is quite hot. Place the veal on a dish, pour the sauce over, and garnish the dish with sippets of toast. The white sauce should be made with nicely-seasoned veal stock made from the veal bones, and thickened with white thickening. It will be improved by stewing onions and mushrooms in it to flavour it, but it will be very good without them. A little lemon-juice may be stirred in at the last moment. Time to stew the cucumber in the butter, about half an hour. Probable cost, exclusive of the cold meat, about 1s. 6d.
A Victorian way with leftover roast or boiled veal: the meat is only reheated, never re-cooked, and the dish stands or falls on the sauce.
- The hinge: gentle heatThe veal is already cooked, so it goes into the sauce only to warm through — five minutes at a bare shiver, no more. Boiling it will squeeze the pieces dry and stringy, which is the usual failure of a blanquette made from cold meat.
- "White thickening"Cassell's term for a pale roux — equal weights butter and flour cooked together without letting them colour. About 1 oz of each to a pint of stock gives a sauce that coats the back of a spoon.
- Veal stock from the bonesFew readers now roast a joint of veal and keep the bones. A light chicken stock, unsalted and unbrowned, is the closest substitute; avoid dark beef stock, which will muddy the colour the dish is named for.
- The vinegar and salt on the cucumberThis is a draining step, not a pickle. Half an hour draws out water so the slices stew rather than boil in their own liquid; drain and pat dry properly or the sauce will thin.
- Cucumbers then and nowOlder varieties were often seedier and could be more bitter than the modern hothouse or English cucumber. With a modern one, peel it, halve and scrape out the seeds, and expect it to soften well inside the half hour the recipe allows.
- "A slice of fresh butter"Roughly 1 oz, about 2 tablespoons. "Fresh" here means unsalted, as against the heavily salted keeping butter of the period — use unsalted.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toasted or fried bread, set round the edge of the dish. Add them at the table; they go soggy in minutes under the sauce.
- YieldThe original gives no quantities. About a pound of cold veal and one large cucumber, with roughly a pint of sauce, would serve four. The 1s. 6d. costing is expressly 'exclusive of the cold meat', the meat being assumed already paid for.
Blanquette is a long-established French way with veal — a white stew, from blanc, in which nothing is browned and the sauce is finished pale with stock, butter and flour. What Cassell's gives here is not the classical version, where raw veal is poached in its own broth, but a frugal English adaptation: a Sunday joint made to reappear on Tuesday. That is why the entry insists the meat merely be brought "quite hot" and why the costing pointedly excludes it. The pairing with cucumber is characteristic of nineteenth-century English cookery, which made a good deal of use of the cucumber as a cooked vegetable — stewed, stuffed, or served in butter — as well as in salads, its watery mildness thought a natural match for the delicate flavour of veal.