VEAL, BREAST OF (a la Chipolata)

This is a dictionary entry rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you will look up two other headings and combine them. The braised rolled breast is the dish, the chipolata is the garnish, and the only new instruction here is how to arrange them.

• What you actually needA boned breast of veal (the original gives no weight; a typical breast runs roughly 3-5 lb before boning), rolled and tied at about 1-inch intervals. Ask a butcher to bone it and leave it in one rectangular sheet; the flap of a whole breast is thin and tears easily.
• Braising in real numbersBraising in real numbers (modern equivalents; the original gives no temperature or time) -- Brown the roll, then braise it on a bed of sliced onion and carrot in stock that comes a third of the way up, covered, at 300-325F for 2 1/2 to 3 hours, until a skewer meets no resistance. Veal breast is heavily collagenous and generally wants the long, low treatment; a large roll may still be tough at two hours.
• What a chipolata ragout containsThe classical set is small pork sausages, glazed button onions, glazed carrots, blanched chestnuts and lardons of bacon, bound in a reduced brown sauce. The items most likely to be behind Cassell's licence to omit "ingredients that are difficult to procure" are the chestnuts and the tiny onions; peeled vacuum-packed chestnuts and frozen pearl onions solve both.
• Chipolata sausagesIn this context that means a thin, coarse-textured fresh pork sausage about the thickness of a finger, not a spiced Italian sausage. Poach or fry them separately and add them to the garnish at the end, or they burst and cloud the sauce.
• The instruction that mattersWorth doing, though the entry does not say so -- Strain and reduce the braising liquid to a glaze and use it to bind the garnish. If you spoon unreduced braising stock over the dish, the vegetables and sausages sit in a thin pool and the whole thing reads as boiled rather than braised.
• The baconBacon of the period was typically dry-cured and often saltier and fatter than modern supermarket rashers. Use unsmoked streaky bacon or pancetta cut into short thick lardons, blanched a minute in boiling water if it tastes very salty, then browned.
• Carving and yieldRest the roll 15 minutes, remove the strings, and cut in 3/4-inch slices across the roll so the layers show. A 3-4 lb breast with a full garnish serves six.