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Veal, Breast of, Boiled
If the sweetbread is to be boiled with the veal, let it soak in water for a couple of hours, then skewer it to the veal. Put this into a saucepan, with boiling water to cover it, let it boil once more, and carefully remove the scum as it rises. Add a handful of parsley, a teaspoonful of peppercorns, a blade of mace, and a little salt. Draw it back, and then simmer gently until done enough. Serve on a hot dish, and pour a little good onion sauce or parsley sauce over it. Send boiled bacon to table on a separate dish. The sweetbread may, of course, be dressed separately. Time to simmer the veal, about one hour and a half.
A plain poach of a bony, gelatinous cut, in the English manner: no browning, a lightly aromatic broth, and a white sauce poured over at the last minute. Two things decide whether it works — the water must never do more than shiver, and the stated time is a minimum, not a target.
- "Draw it back"Move the pan to the edge of the range so the liquid drops below a boil. On a modern hob, bring it to the boil once to raise the scum, then hold it at 180-185F, where the surface barely trembles. A rolling boil squeezes the muscle fibres and leaves boiled veal stringy and grey.
- The cut, and the timeBreast of veal is rib bones, cartilage and connective tissue. An hour and a half will suit only a small piece; a larger, heavier breast is likely to want longer at a bare simmer, tested by a skewer sliding out without resistance. Veal breast is generally a special-order item now — ask a butcher rather than expecting to find it in a chill cabinet.
- SweetbreadsThe two-hour soak is to draw out blood and make them white; change the water once or twice and keep it cold. Skewered to the veal they cook far longer than they need — sweetbreads are done in 15-20 minutes and turn cottony after that. Dressing them separately, as the recipe allows, is the better course.
- A blade of maceA blade is one piece of the dried aril of nutmeg; the aril of a single seed yields several such blades. Failing that, use a scant 1/8 teaspoon of ground mace, or a light grating of nutmeg.
- Salt the water properly"A little salt" is sparing. The joint sits in a large volume of water for an hour and a half or more and will leach out flavour; salting the poaching liquid, about 1 teaspoon per quart, keeps the meat from arriving at table flat.
- Onion sauceThe Victorian standard is a white sauce made with milk and a little of the cooking liquor, thickened with a butter-and-flour roux, with soft-boiled and chopped or sieved onion stirred through. Parsley sauce is the same base with a good handful of chopped parsley added off the heat so it stays green.
- Keep the brothWhat is left in the pan is excellent veal stock, lightly spiced. Strain it, chill it, and lift off the fat; the collagen from the breast bones will often set it to a jelly.
- YieldA 3-4 lb breast, bone in, serves four to five with the bacon and sauce. Carve between the ribs.
Boiled veal with a white sauce and a dish of bacon alongside is a thoroughly English arrangement, and Cassell's assumes a reader who already understands the logic of it: veal is a lean, faintly flavoured meat, so it is poached rather than roasted, then given back richness in the form of a butter-and-milk sauce, and salt in the form of the bacon sent to table separately. Breast was among the cheaper parts of the calf, full of bone and gristle, and the long gentle simmer is what turns that connective tissue into something soft enough to eat. The sweetbread — the thymus or pancreas of the calf — was reckoned a delicacy and appears here attached to a cheap joint. The instruction to "draw it back" belongs to the coal range: the cook slid the pan from the hot plate over the firebox toward the cooler edge.