Home › The Principles of Cookery › Veal, Brisket of, and Rice
Veal, Brisket of, and Rice
Cut a brisket of veal into neat pieces, and stew it in the same manner as breast of veal. Boil a pint of washed rice very gradually in a little more than a quart of broth till it is tender and has absorbed all the moisture. Butter the inside of a plain mould, and line it with the boiled rice an inch and a half thick. Put the veal into the centre with a little of the thickening sauce. Cover the stew with rice, put the lid on the mould, and bake the preparation in a gentle oven. Let it remain until stiff, and be careful that it does not burn. Turn it out upon a dish, and send the remainder of the sauce to table with it. If liked, to save trouble, a wall of rice may be placed round the dish, rice forming also a foundation. The addition of a spoonful of curry-powder or curry-paste will convert this dish into curried veal. Time to bake the rice in the mould, about three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 4s. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A moulded rice-and-stew dish of the sort Victorian kitchens used to turn leftovers or cheap cuts into something that could be sent to table whole. The hinge is the rice: it has to be cooked soft and sticky enough to hold a wall, which means the grain choice matters more than anything else here.
- Rice choiceThe rice must absorb all its liquid and cling together, so a short- or medium-grain rice (pudding rice, arborio, Calrose) is what the method assumes. Long-grain basmati stays separate and the mould will collapse when turned out.
- The measurementsA pint of rice is a volume, not a weight. As an imperial pint that is roughly 2½ US cups, about 17 oz/480 g dry, and "a little more than a quart" of broth is a little over 2:1 by volume, which cooks to a soft, clinging grain rather than a fluffy one.
- "A gentle oven"A low oven, in modern terms somewhere around 300–325°F (150–160°C); the term has no fixed equivalent. The purpose of the baking is to set the rice, not to cook the meat, which is already stewed; higher heat browns the outside of the mould before the centre firms.
- The mouldA "plain mould" here is a smooth-sided metal charlotte mould or pudding basin with a fitted lid. A soufflé dish covered tightly with foil works; butter it generously and, for insurance, line the base with a disc of baking parchment.
- Stewing the vealThe recipe leans on a separate entry for breast of veal, which is not reproduced here; the method presumably amounts to simmering the meat gently in stock until tender and thickening the liquid into a sauce, since the recipe later calls for "thickening sauce". Brisket of veal is not a supermarket cut; ask a butcher, or substitute boneless veal shoulder cut into 1-inch pieces, allowing roughly 1½ to 2 hours of low simmering.
- Filling and sauceOnly a little sauce goes inside — too much and it soaks the rice wall and the mould will not stand. Keep the rest hot and serve it in a boat, as instructed.
- Turning outLet the mould stand 10 minutes out of the oven before inverting. It firms as it cools slightly; straight from the oven it slumps.
- The curry variationNineteenth-century commercial curry powders were typically turmeric-heavy, though strength varied a good deal between blends, so a spoonful of a modern powder may read differently. Start with about two teaspoons stirred into the sauce and bloom it in the fat before adding liquid.
- Yield and costSix to eight, as stated. The "probable cost, 4s." is the book's estimate of what the ingredients would come to at the time of publication, and is of interest only as a period benchmark.
Moulded and cased dishes like this one belong to the nineteenth-century service tradition in which food arrived at table as an architectural object — a bordure or wall of rice, potato or forcemeat enclosing a stew that would otherwise look shapeless in a dish. The book offers the trick twice over: the proper moulded version and, "to save trouble," a simple ring of rice piped or spooned round the edge of the platter, which is the same idea with less work. Brisket of veal was a cheap, gelatinous cut in an era when veal was ordinary butcher's meat rather than a specialty, and encasing it in rice stretched a small quantity across eight people. The casual note that a spoonful of curry powder converts the whole thing into "curried veal" is characteristic of late-Victorian British cookery, where curry had long since become a domestic seasoning applied to leftovers and economical cuts rather than a distinct cuisine.