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Veal, Breast of, Rolled
Trim a breast of veal, and remove all the bones and tendons. If requested, the butcher will perform this operation, which should be done the day before the veal is to be cooked, so that the bones may be stewed for gravy (see VEAL, GRAVY FOR). Spread a thin layer of forcemeat over the inside of the breast, roll it up very tightly, and bind it firmly with tape. Tie it in a cloth. Put a plate at the bottom of the stewpan, lay the veal on it, and cover with cold water. Bring the liquor to the boil, skim it, and simmer gently for three hours. When done enough, take off the cloth, put the veal on a dish, pour the gravy over, garnish with cut lemon, fried bacon, and forcemeat balls, and it will be ready for serving. If liked, two pounded anchovies, a little blanched and chopped parsley, and the boiled livers of two fowls may be added to the gravy. Veal thus prepared may be baked or roasted as well as boiled. Time, three hours from the time the water boils. Probable cost, veal, 10d. per pound. Sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A Victorian galantine in all but name: a boned breast of veal, spread with forcemeat, rolled, bound and poached. The method is sound, but several of the fittings — tape, pudding cloth, the plate in the pot — need translating.
- Get the butcher to bone itA breast of veal is the lower ribcage, with a sheet of cartilage and tendon running through it; boning it cleanly is genuinely awkward work. Order it boned and ask for the bones, which make the gravy the recipe cross-references. The book gives no weight, but a full boned breast — very roughly 4-5 lb — would be about right for the stated yield.
- ForcemeatA typical Victorian veal forcemeat is breadcrumbs, shredded suet, chopped ham or bacon, parsley, lemon peel, mace and egg to bind; this recipe itself specifies nothing. Any well-seasoned sausage-meat-and-crumb stuffing works. Spread it thin — a thick layer makes the roll hard to close and it swells as it cooks.
- Tape and clothButcher's twine replaces the tape; tie at 1-inch intervals. The cloth is there to keep the roll cylindrical and stop forcemeat leaking into the broth — a double layer of muslin or a clean cotton tea towel, wrapped and tied at both ends, does the same job. Rinse any new cloth first so it does not shed sizing.
- The plate in the stewpanAn inverted heatproof plate or a folded trivet keeps the meat off the direct heat of the pan base so it poaches rather than scorches. Any steamer insert or rack serves.
- Simmer, do not boilThree hours at a bare tremble, with the surface barely moving. A hard boil squeezes the muscle and pushes the forcemeat out through the seam. Veal breast is collagen-rich and wants long gentle heat; cook until an inserted skewer meets no resistance, and check the centre reaches at least 165F for the stuffing's sake.
- Cold-water startStarting in cold water is deliberate — it draws scum to the surface for skimming and gives a clearer broth. Skim once at the boil and again ten minutes later, then leave it alone.
- Anchovies and fowls' liversTwo "pounded" anchovies means two whole salt-cured fish mashed to a paste — closer to four tinned fillets, or a teaspoon or so of anchovy paste. The boiled fowls' livers would be mashed or chopped into the gravy, giving both body and flavour in the old style. Both additions are optional and both are assertive.
- Baked or roastedThe recipe says only that the veal may be baked or roasted, with no temperature or separate time. A reasonable modern rendering: omit the cloth, brown the roll, then cook it covered with a little stock in a moderate oven — around 325F — for two to two and a half hours, uncovering at the end to colour.
- Cost and yieldTenpence a pound is a late-Victorian price and tells you only that breast was among the cheapest cuts. Eight to ten servings is realistic if the roll is a full breast and there are potatoes alongside; served cold in slices the next day it goes further.
Breast is the cheapest part of the calf and the most awkward, which is why nineteenth-century English cookery books commonly treat it the same way: bone it, stuff it, roll it, and cook it long enough for the connective tissue to give way. The technique is often described as the domestic cousin of the French ballotine, and the same logic — bone, forcemeat, bind, poach — is generally said to produce galantine when it is pressed and served cold. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for households with a cook and a butcher's account, assumes both the tape and the pudding cloth as ordinary equipment, and the plate at the bottom of the stewpan is a standard trick of the period for coal ranges with fierce, uneven bottom heat. The anchovy-and-liver enrichment of the gravy appears to be an older English habit, seemingly a survival from eighteenth-century cookery where anchovy did much of the savoury work later handed over to bottled sauces. Veal itself was far more common on English tables then than now, and the book goes so far as to note a price of tenpence a pound.