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Veal, Breast of, Stuffed and Stewed
Take a breast of veal, raise the flesh, and fill the space with good veal forcemeat. Bring the edges together, and sew them securely with a little piece of muslin over them that the forcemeat may not escape. Put the meat down before a clear fire, dredge it with flour, and baste till it is equally and brightly browned all over. Take it up, and put it into a stewpan with about a cupful of stock made from bones. Put the contents of the dripping-tin into it, throw a handful of the forcemeat in to flavour the sauce cover the stewpan closely, and let the veal simmer gently till done enough. Take it up, if necessary thicken the gravy with a little brown thickening, pour it over the veal, and serve very hot. Garnish the dish with fried rashers of bacon, forcemeat balls, and cut lemon. Time, about half an hour to brown the veal; two hours or more to stew it. Probable cost, 10d. per pound. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A Victorian two-stage method: brown the stuffed breast at an open fire, then finish it slowly in its own drippings. Both stages translate cleanly to a modern kitchen, with the browning done in the oven or a heavy pan.
- The hinge: keep the stuffing inEverything depends on the pocket being closed. Sew the edges with butcher's twine and back the seam with a strip of muslin or cheesecloth as directed, or the forcemeat will swell out and disperse into the gravy during two hours of simmering. Cut the thread away before saucing.
- Buying the jointA whole breast of veal typically runs somewhere around 4-8 lb bone-in and is now usually a special-order cut from a butcher. Ask for it boned or for a pocket to be cut between the meat and the rib bones -- "raise the flesh" means separating the two layers to make that cavity.
- Browning without a spit"Put the meat down before a clear fire" means roasting on a spit or hook in front of live coals with a dripping-tin beneath. Use a hot oven, 425-450F, in a shallow roasting tin for about 30 minutes, turning once, and keep every drop of fat and juice from the tin -- it is the base of the sauce.
- Veal forcemeatA typical Victorian veal forcemeat is minced veal or lean bacon with breadcrumbs, suet, grated lemon peel, mace and egg to bind. A modern equivalent of ground veal or pork with breadcrumbs, egg, lemon zest and herbs behaves the same way. Reserve a handful for the sauce and roll a few small balls to fry as garnish.
- A cupful of stockSomewhere around 8-10 fl oz, and deliberately little -- this is a braise in its own fat and juices, not a boil. Check the pan once or twice and add a splash more if it threatens to catch.
- Cooking time and donenessTwo hours at a bare simmer is right for a cut this sinewy; breast of veal is collagen-heavy and needs the time to become tender. Judge by a skewer sliding in with no resistance rather than by the clock, and note that the stuffing should reach 165F.
- Brown thickeningA Victorian pantry staple: flour cooked in butter or drippings until nut-brown, kept ready to whisk into gravies. A tablespoon each of butter and flour taken to a light brown does the same job, or reduce the strained liquid instead.
- ServingSix to eight, as stated, and it wants something plain alongside -- boiled potatoes or rice. The lemon in the garnish is not decoration; the acidity cuts a dish that is otherwise fat and forcemeat.
Breast of veal was one of the cheapest cuts in the Victorian butcher's shop -- Cassell's puts it at 10d. a pound -- and the stuffed, stewed breast is the classic thrifty treatment for it: a bony, gelatinous joint made to feed eight by way of a pocket of forcemeat. The two-stage method here, browning at the fire and then finishing in a covered stewpan, is a direct descendant of open-hearth cookery, of a kind often said to belong to the period when closed ranges were displacing the spit and dripping-tin; the instruction to tip the contents of the tin into the stewpan preserves a hearth cook's instinct that nothing rendered from the meat is thrown away. Forcemeat itself takes its name from the French farce, stuffing, and the balls fried as garnish are simply the surplus put to use, in the same spirit as the handful stirred into the sauce to flavour it.