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VEAL, COLD (a la Bourgeoise)
Prepare the veal the day before it is wanted, according to the directions in the preceding recipe. Turn it out into a bowl, pour the gravy over, and let it get cold. When wanted, turn the whole upon a dish, and serve with the gravy set to jelly round it.
This is the second half of a two-part method: it assumes you have already made the braised veal à la Bourgeoise in the preceding entry, and it tells you only how to set and serve it cold. Everything depends on whether the braising liquid will gel on its own.
- What the preceding recipe was'Veal a la Bourgeoise' would have been a joint of veal braised slowly with bacon, onions, carrots and stock until tender; the cut is not specified here. This entry simply takes that dish, its cooking liquid and all, and presents it cold in its own jelly.
- Whether it will actually setThe jelly comes from collagen in the veal and its bones, not from added gelatine. A boned, lean cut braised in thin stock may well fail to set. Use a bony or gelatinous cut, or reduce the strained liquid until a spoonful chilled on a saucer is tacky and firm; failing that, soften and dissolve about 1 teaspoon powdered gelatine per cup of hot liquid.
- Degrease before chillingBraised veal liquid carries a good deal of bacon and veal fat. Strain it, let the fat rise, and lift the disc off once cold, or the jelly will be cloudy and greasy on the palate.
- Cooling and holdingBring the meat and liquid down out of the danger range promptly rather than leaving a warm bowl standing overnight as a Victorian larder allowed. Set the bowl in cold water, then refrigerate as soon as it stops steaming, and eat within three days.
- The mould"Turn it out into a bowl" makes the bowl the mould: pack the meat in snugly so the gravy fills every gap, and press it lightly with a saucer and a weight if you want clean slices. To unmould, dip the bowl a few seconds in hot water and invert onto a chilled dish.
- ServingChop the surplus jelly roughly and heap it round the base rather than spreading it smooth, for the sake of appearance. Sliced thin with a sharp knife dipped in hot water, a joint of around 3 lb should serve six to eight with salad, pickles and bread, though the recipe specifies no weight.
Cold meat set in its own jelly was a mainstay of the nineteenth-century household because it solved a real problem: a joint large enough to be worth braising was more than one meal, and a jellied second service was more presentable than a plate of reheated slices. The label à la bourgeoise is the French kitchen's term for plain household cooking — meat braised with its vegetables and served in its own liquor, as distinct from the sauced and garnished dishes of the professional repertoire — so a book like Cassell's, aimed squarely at middle-class English households with a cook and a cold larder, reprints it without apology. That the gravy sets at all is often put down to how veal was butchered then, sold with bone and gristle attached; a modern trimmed veal roast may well yield less gelatine, and where the recipe disappoints today the reason may have nothing to do with the cook.