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Veal, Breast of, Stewed in White Sauce
Take a piece of the breast of veal weighing about three pounds, and cut it into neat pieces convenient for serving. Put these into a stewpan with a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, a bay-leaf, two shallots, or four young onions, the thin rind of half a lemon, a blade of mace, and a little salt and white pepper. Pour upon the meat a pint of stock or water, let the liquor boil, skim carefully, then draw it to the side, and simmer as gently as possible till done enough. Take up the meat, and place it in the oven to keep hot. Strain the gravy, put it back into the saucepan, and stir into it the yolks of two eggs which have been beaten up with a quarter of a pint of milk or cream. Stir this sauce over the fire for a minute or two till it begins to thicken, then pour it over the veal, and serve very hot. The sauce must not boil after the eggs are added, or it will curdle. If liked, the meat may be left whole instead of being cut up. Those who like the flavour may rub freshly-cut garlic across the stewpan five or six times before putting in the meat. Time to simmer the veal, one hour and a half, or two hours if thick. Probable cost, veal, 9d. to 10d. per pound. Sufficient for six persons.
A plain white stew (a blanquette in all but name) that depends entirely on temperature control at the end. Everything else is straightforward simmering.
- The hinge: never boil the liaisonOnce the egg yolks and cream go in, hold the sauce below about 180F and stir constantly. The book warns of curdling and it is right — boiling will scramble the yolks and leave a grainy sauce.
- Breast of vealA fatty, bony cut sold as veal breast or riblets; ask a butcher, as supermarkets rarely stock it. Three pounds bone-in is right for six as written. Boneless veal shoulder works with the same method and will generally need less time; check it early.
- UnitsA pint here is the imperial pint, 20 fl oz, so use 2 1/2 US cups of stock. A quarter of a pint of milk or cream is 5 fl oz, a generous half cup.
- Blade of maceOne dried piece of the aril from nutmeg. If you only have ground, use a scant 1/8 teaspoon and add it with the liquid, or grate a little nutmeg instead.
- "Simmer as gently as possible"Bare tremble, 180-190F, lid on. A rolling simmer squeezes veal breast dry and clouds the cooking liquor, which becomes the sauce. On a modern hob the lowest setting plus a diffuser is usually needed.
- Keeping the meat hotThe book says only to put the meat in the oven to keep hot; use the lowest oven, around 200F, or simply cover the meat and set it over a pan of hot water. Do not leave it uncovered in a hot oven while you finish the sauce or the surface will dry and grey.
- Straining and reducingThe strained liquor will be thin. Reduce it by a third before adding the yolk-and-cream mixture, or the finished sauce will taste watery — the eggs thicken but do not concentrate flavour.
- Seasoning at the endWhite pepper, salt and a squeeze of the lemon you pared. The original relies on the peel alone, which reads flat to modern palates; acid added off the heat lifts the whole dish without threatening the eggs.
This is the English form of the French blanquette de veau: pale meat poached in an unbrowned stock, the liquor finished with an egg-and-cream liaison. The technique is the lesson — a thickening with yolks is the standard illustration of a sauce that must be brought to the edge of setting and no further, and many nineteenth-century manuals teach it with the same warning about curdling. Breast of veal was a cheap cut in the period, and the quoted 9d. to 10d. a pound is well below the price of loin or fillet; it fed six because the bone and fat went a long way. The optional trick of rubbing cut garlic around the pan rather than putting it in the stew is characteristic of British cookery of the period, when garlic was treated as a flavour to be hinted at rather than cooked with.