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Veal, Breast of, Stewed Plainly
Take out the long bones and the gristle, and trim a breast of veal neatly. Put it into a stewpan, and cover with boiling stock made from bones. Let the liquor boil, skim carefully, and simmer very gently until the veal is tender. Drain and dish it, garnish the dish with forcemeat balls, and pour a little good gravy round it. The liquor in which the meat is stewed, unless thoroughly cleared from the fat, will be too rich to serve with it. A little bacon should accompany this dish. Time to stew the veal, two to two and a half hours. Probable cost, veal, 9d. to 10d. per pound.
A plain white stew of the sort Victorian cooks used as a base for half a dozen finished dishes. The technique is sound; only the cut and the shopping have changed.
- The cutBreast of veal is the belly section, layered with rib bones, cartilage and connective tissue. Ask a butcher for a bone-in veal breast (they commonly run anywhere from about 3 lb to 8 lb), or use boneless veal breast and skip the boning step. Removing the long rib bones and gristle first, as directed, makes the cooked meat easier to carve.
- Cover with boiling stockAdding boiling liquid rather than cold was the standard period direction, the stated aim being to keep the meat firm and pale. Stock made from bones is what the recipe calls for, plausibly from the trimmings you have just removed; a light chicken stock works as well.
- Simmer very gentlyThe hinge of the dish. Veal breast is collagen-rich and needs a bare tremble at the surface, around 180-190F, for the full two to two and a half hours. A rolling boil will shred the meat into strings and cloud the liquor, and no amount of skimming will fix it.
- Skimming and the liquorThe warning about richness is literal: breast is a fatty cut and the cooking liquid will carry a heavy layer. Skim during cooking, then chill the strained liquor and lift the solid fat off before using it for anything. Cassell's assumes you serve a separately made gravy instead.
- Forcemeat ballsPeriod forcemeat is minced veal or pork bound with breadcrumbs, suet, egg, lemon peel and mace, rolled small and poached or fried. Any well-seasoned fine sausagemeat rolled into walnut-sized balls and simmered in the stock for 10 minutes gives the same effect.
- The baconNot a garnish but a seasoning device — the salt and smoke answer the mildness of the veal. Serve a few thick rashers or a piece of simmered streaky bacon alongside, sliced.
- YieldA 3-4 lb bone-in breast serves about four; a larger breast will stretch further. The meat is best carved across the grain in thick slices while still hot; it firms up quickly as it cools.
- Costing9d. to 10d. per pound is consistent with the book's own period, when veal breast was among the cheaper cuts on the block. It is now a specialist order in most places, and priced accordingly.
Breast of veal was the working cook's veal — cheap, awkwardly boned and fatty, redeemed by long slow moisture. English cookery leaned hard on it through the nineteenth century, whether boned and stuffed or, as here, simmered pale and dressed with forcemeat and gravy.