Home › The Principles of Cookery › Veal, Boiled
Veal, Boiled
Generally speaking, veal plainly boiled is regarded as too insipid to be much relished. Still, for an occasional change, the joints which would otherwise be roasted may be boiled. Bacon, or sausage, or boiled tongue should be served with boiled veal, and parsley and butter, onion, oyster, celery, or any piquant sauce should accompany it. Particular attention is necessary in boiling veal, as it is so easily discoloured, and then has a very bad appearance. It should be put into a delicately-clean saucepan, with boiling milk and water to cover it, boiled for two or three minutes, then drawn back, and simmered gently until done enough. As the scum rises it should be removed with scrupulous care. Veal from which gravy has been made may be served in this way if it has not been too much boiled.
This is a method rather than a measured recipe: the whole point is keeping the meat pale, which is why the liquid is milk and water and why the pot must be spotless. Everything else follows from that.
- The hinge: never let it boilAfter the initial two or three minutes to set the surface, the water should sit at a bare shiver, around 180F, with no rolling bubbles. Veal held at a hard boil turns grey, tightens and squeezes out its juices; the book's own complaint of insipidity, though, is about the flavour of plainly boiled veal rather than about overboiling.
- Milk and waterThe recipe gives no proportions; roughly one part whole milk to three or four parts water is a workable modern ratio. The milk keeps the meat white and adds a little body; it also scorches easily, so use a heavy pan and check the base. Skimmed milk works but does less.
- "Drawn back"On a coal range this meant sliding the pan off the hot plate to a cooler part. On a modern hob, drop the burner to its lowest setting, or hold the pot in a 250-275F oven, which is steadier than a gas flame.
- Timing and donenessReckon about 20 minutes per pound plus 20 minutes for a boned and rolled joint, but go by temperature: 145-150F at the centre, then 15 minutes' rest before carving. A 4 lb shoulder or breast runs roughly an hour and a half.
- Which joints"The joints which would otherwise be roasted" means shoulder, breast, boned and rolled loin or a knuckle of leg. Modern cuts labelled veal roast or rolled veal shoulder behave the same way; a lean cutlet or escalope does not and should not be treated this way.
- SkimmingSkim in the first ten minutes, when the grey albumin froth rises, and again once or twice after. If it is stirred back in it clings to the meat as specks and dulls the surface.
- The accompanimentsParsley and butter is the period's parsley sauce: melted butter, thickened, finished with chopped parsley (cooking liquor was sometimes used in place of part of the water). The bacon, sausage or tongue reads less as garnish than as seasoning, supplying the salt and fat the meat lacks.
- Don't discard the liquorThe strained cooking liquid is a mild white stock, useful for the sauce that goes with the dish, for blanquette or for a soup the following day. Reduce it before storing, since it is thin.
- YieldA 4 lb joint serves six to eight with the bacon or tongue alongside; cold leftovers slice well for salad or a pie.
Boiling veal belongs to a tradition that prized whiteness in meat above almost anything else: the pale calf, the pale sauce, the pale joint on a white dish. English cookery shares this taste with French practice, where blanquette de veau depends on cooking the meat in a liquid that never colours it, and where milk or a flour-and-water blanc was used for the same purpose with sweetbreads, brains and calf's head. Cassell's is frank that the result tastes of little, which says something about late Victorian veal itself, often said to be mild to begin with. The remedy offered is the standard one of the period: hang the flavour on the plate around the meat rather than in it, with bacon, tongue or sausage for salt and a sharp or savoury sauce for interest. The closing note about using veal from which gravy has already been drawn is pure household economy, of a piece with a book written for kitchens where nothing edible left the pot unaccounted for.