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Veal Cutlets, Gravy For
Put the bones and trimmings of the veal into a saucepan, barely cover them with cold water, and add (for a pint of water) a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme or marjoram, a small roll of thin lemon-rind, half a blade of mace, and a little pepper. A little bacon-rind may be added if it is at hand. Cover the saucepan closely, and simmer the stock gently till it is strong and nicely flavoured. Strain it, thicken with brown thickening, and let it simmer by the side of the fire till it has thrown up the grease. If the cutlets have been fried, lift them from the pan, and pour away the fat, leaving the brown gravy at the bottom. Pour the thickened sauce upon this gravy, stir well, boil it a few minutes, add a little salt if required, and then strain it over the meat. A few spoonfuls of cream may be added to the gravy if liked. Time, one hour to simmer the trimmings of veal.
A working pan-gravy built on veal bone stock and finished in the frying pan the cutlets came out of. Almost everything here still applies; the vocabulary is what dates it.
- Brown thickeningFlour cooked in butter or clean dripping until well browned, i.e. a brown roux, commonly made in advance and kept ready for use. Roughly equal weights of fat and flour, about an ounce of each to a pint of stock, will thicken it; let it darken slowly, since scorched roux tastes bitter and thickens poorly.
- A blade of maceThe dried outer covering of the nutmeg, sold in brittle orange-brown pieces. Half a blade is about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace, but ground mace fades fast and will cloud the stock, so add it late if that is what you have.
- "By the side of the fire"A range instruction: the pan sits off the hottest plate so the sauce barely moves and fat and scum collect at one edge to be skimmed. On a modern hob, the lowest setting with the pan pulled half off the burner does the same job.
- The hinge is the deglazePouring off the frying fat while keeping the browned residue is the whole point of the method. Add the thickened stock to a still-warm pan and scrape hard; those solids carry most of the flavour, and a pan left to go cold will not release them.
- Simmering timeOne hour is enough for bones and trimmings to give a light, clean veal stock. Longer is not better here — this is meant to taste of veal and lemon peel, not of reduced glaze.
- Cream at the endThe recipe does not say when to add the optional cream; adding it after straining and keeping it below a boil is the safer course.
- Salt lastBacon rind and reduction both concentrate salt, so the instruction to season only at the end is deliberate. Taste after the gravy has been poured over the pan residue, which is itself salty.
Veal was the natural meat for this kind of sauce because its bones are rich in gelatine and its flavour is mild enough that the aromatics — parsley, thyme or marjoram, lemon peel, mace — are the point rather than a disguise. The technique is nineteenth-century English kitchen economy: nothing bought for the gravy, only the bones and trimmings left from cutting the cutlets, plus a scrap of bacon rind if the larder happened to hold one. Brown thickening, kept ready-made, appears in Cassell's and in earlier writers such as Eliza Acton and Mrs Beeton. Mace and lemon rind with veal is an older pairing still, associated with the spiced sauces of Georgian cookery, and it survives here after the heavier spicing around it had fallen away.