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VEAL, BREAST OF, RAGOUT OF (another way)
Take about four pounds of the breast of veal. Divide this into pieces convenient for serving, and fry them to a light brown in hot fat. Drain them, put them into a stewpan, cover with stock made from bones, and put with them a large onion stuck with two cloves, half a blade of mace, a handful of parsley, a sprig of thyme, a small roll of thin lemon-rind, five or six bruised allspice, and a little pepper and salt. Cover the saucepan closely, and let its contents simmer very gently till the veal is tender. Strain a pint of the gravy, or more if required, into a separate saucepan, and put the first one by the side of the fire that the meat may keep hot. Thicken the gravy with brown thickening, and flavour with a dessert-spoonful of lemon-juice, a dessert-spoonful of ketchup, and half a wine-glass of light wine. Taste it, add a little more pepper and salt if required, and let it boil up once. Put the veal into a dish, pour the sauce over, and serve very hot. A little fried bacon should accompany this dish, and forcemeat balls may be added or not. Time to simmer the meat, one hour and a half, or two hours if thick. Probable cost, veal, 9d. to 10d. per pound. Sufficient for seven or eight persons.
A straightforward braise of a bony, gelatinous cut, finished with a separately thickened sauce. Most of what needs translating is the vocabulary of the Victorian store cupboard.
- The cutBreast of veal is the belly section, layered with cartilage, bone and connective tissue. It needs the full long simmer to become tender, and it will be genuinely unpleasant if pulled early. Ask a butcher to saw it into serving pieces across the ribs.
- Brown thickeningThis is the book's term for a brown roux: flour cooked in butter or dripping until it is the colour of a hazelnut shell. Reckon on about an ounce each of butter and flour for a pint of gravy, and whisk the hot strained liquid into it off the heat to avoid lumps.
- KetchupNot tomato. In this period ketchup meant mushroom or walnut ketchup, a thin dark salty condiment. Mushroom ketchup is still sold; a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce or a little soy gives a comparable savoury lift if you have none.
- Spoon and glass measuresA dessert-spoonful is two teaspoons. A wine-glass in Victorian cookery books is usually reckoned at about two fluid ounces, so half a glass is roughly an ounce, about two tablespoons; the "light wine" called for would most likely have been a light white.
- Blade of maceA blade is one strip of the lacy aril around a nutmeg. Half a blade is a small amount; a pinch of ground mace, no more than an eighth of a teaspoon, stands in for it. It is easy to overdo.
- Lemon rindTake the peel with a vegetable peeler and leave the white pith behind. Pith held in a two-hour simmer turns the gravy bitter.
- Simmer, not boilThe hinge of the dish. Veal breast held at a rolling boil will shed fat into the liquid and go stringy rather than yielding. Keep it at a bare tremble, on the lowest burner setting or in a 300F oven with the lid on.
- Degrease before thickeningBreast of veal renders a good deal of fat, and the recipe says nothing about removing it. Strain the pint of gravy and let it settle a minute so the fat can be spooned off before the roux goes in.
- YieldSeven or eight portions assumes a Victorian table where this was one dish among several. Four pounds of bone-in breast will serve four generously as a main course.
Ragout comes from the French rago cûter, to revive the appetite, and by the nineteenth century the word had settled in English kitchens to mean any dish of meat cut small and stewed in a made sauce. Breast of veal was a cheap cut, and the price note of ninepence to tenpence a pound is the point of the recipe as much as the method. The flavouring here is thoroughly of its period rather than French — onion stuck with cloves, mace, allspice, lemon peel and a spoonful of mushroom ketchup are the standard English seasoning set of the era, and the ketchup in particular was the bottled umami of the Victorian larder, made from mushrooms or walnuts before tomato ketchup displaced the name. The optional forcemeat balls and the fried bacon are there to supply the seasoning and browning that veal itself cannot.