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Veal Cutlets, with Sorrel
Take some cutlets of an even thickness from the best end of a neck of veal, trim them in the usual way, and fry in a little butter till they are lightly browned on both sides. Drain them, put them into a stewpan, pour over as much nicely-flavoured veal gravy as will cover them, and let them simmer gently till done enough. A glassful of light wine may be added if liked. Dish the cutlets in a circle, put some sorrel puree into the centre of the dish, and serve them, with the gravy in which they were stewed, in a tureen. The puree may be prepared as follows. Wash a peck of fresh green sorrel in plenty of water, and put it into a stewpan with a pint of water and a pinch of salt. Stir it over the fire for a quarter of an hour or until tender, then drain the water from it. Dissolve two ounces of butter in a stewpan, and mix two ounces of flour smoothly with it. Stir it over the fire for three minutes. Moisten with a pint of gravy, and the sorrel and a little pepper and salt, and stir the mixture over the fire for twenty minutes. Rub it through a hair sieve, make the puree hot, and it will be ready for use.
A straightforward braise, but the purée as written is scaled for a Victorian kitchen and will fill your largest pan several times over. The quantities, not the method, are what need attention.
- A peck of sorrelA peck is 8 dry quarts, a garden's worth of loosely packed leaves rather than a supermarket's. Sorrel collapses to almost nothing, so a pound of leaves will still give a useful quantity of purée. Scale the butter, flour and gravy down in proportion.
- Use a non-reactive panSorrel is high in oxalic acid and will take on a metallic taste and grey colour in cast iron, aluminium or unlined copper. Stainless steel or enamel throughout, including the sieve step.
- Cutlets from the neckThe best end of the neck is what a modern butcher sells as veal rib chops. Ask for them cut evenly, about 3/4 inch thick, and trim the rib bone clean if you want the classic look.
- Veal gravyThis means veal stock reduced and lightly seasoned, not a thickened gravy. A good unsalted veal or light chicken stock does the job; the purée uses another pint of it, so allow for that.
- How long is "done enough"Rib chops need 20 to 30 minutes at a bare simmer, covered, until the meat gives easily near the bone. Longer than that and veal from the neck goes dry and stringy rather than tender.
- Light wineA dry white — Muscadet, Chablis, an unoaked Chardonnay. Add it after browning, before the stock, and let it reduce by half so the finished sauce is not sharp on top of the already-sharp sorrel.
- The purée timingsFifteen minutes of stirring is more than fresh sorrel needs; the leaves wilt and break down in three or four. The twenty minutes after the roux is what matters, as it cooks out the flour.
- Hair sieveA fine-mesh sieve pressed with a ladle, or a food mill fitted with the fine plate. A blender gives a smoother, greener result but the texture is thinner than the original intends.
- Expect a drab colourCooked sorrel always turns olive-khaki. Nothing has gone wrong, and no amount of brief cooking prevents it.
Sorrel with veal is a piece of French practice that English cookery books absorbed wholesale: the pairing of veal with sorrel and the purée served with it are documented in French cookery, and Cassell's, compiled for households that aspired to that standard, reproduces the pairing without comment. The logic is the same one that puts apple with pork or gooseberry with mackerel — a sharp, acid green cutting through fatty white meat and a butter-and-flour sauce. Sorrel was then grown in British kitchen gardens, though nineteenth-century British writers more often note it as a plant used far more in France than in England. The name comes through Old French surele, generally traced to a Germanic root meaning sour.