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VEAL, FILLET OF, BOILED (another way)
Remove the bone, and fill the centre with stuffing similar to that used for boiled turkey. Allow twenty minutes to the pound, and twenty minutes over, for the boiling of this joint. After the water boils, skim carefully, and let it only simmer, keeping the meat covered by adding hot water, or it will become brown. The beauty of this dish depends on delicacy in the colour of the meat. A sauce must be formed by taking out a pint of the broth which has been produced by boiling the veal; this must be thickened with good cream, butter, and flour, and flavoured with mushroom, ketchup, and mushroom-powder or button mushrooms. If cream be not at hand for thickening the broth, a sauce may be made by mingling the yolks of two eggs with flour, butter, and broth.
A Victorian boiled joint that depends almost entirely on temperature control: the water must never do more than tremble, or the meat toughens and greys. The rest is a velouté made from the cooking liquor.
- What the cut isA "fillet of veal" in nineteenth-century English butchery is the thick end of the leg — what a modern butcher calls the round or top round — not the tenderloin. Ask for a boneless leg roast of 3-5 lb, tied, or have the bone removed and the cavity left open for stuffing.
- The stuffing"Stuffing similar to that used for boiled turkey" means a plain bread forcemeat: fresh breadcrumbs, shredded suet or butter, lemon zest, parsley, thyme, mace, bound with egg. Oysters were often added in the turkey version. Pack it loosely and tie or sew the joint closed, since stuffing swells and will burst a tight seam.
- The timing is too longThe timing -- Twenty minutes to the pound plus twenty over comes to about an hour and forty minutes for a 4 lb joint. Cook to an internal temperature of 145F at the centre of the meat, then rest — the thermometer decides, not the clock.
- Simmer, never boilThis is the hinge of the dish. Bring to the boil once, skim the grey scum thoroughly, then drop the heat until the surface only shivers — around 180F. A rolling boil squeezes the muscle fibres and turns the meat stringy and dull.
- Keeping it covered and paleAny part of the joint standing above the liquid oxidises and darkens, which is what the author means by the beauty of the dish depending on colour. Top up with boiling water from a kettle, never cold, so the pot temperature does not drop.
- Mushroom ketchup and mushroom powderMushroom ketchup is a thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice liquid, still sold by a few British makers; it is nothing like tomato ketchup and a dash of it plus a splash of soy or Worcestershire is the nearest substitute. Mushroom powder is simply dried mushrooms ground fine, easily made in a spice grinder.
- The sauceA pint here is an English imperial pint, 20 fl oz, about 2½ US cups. Make a blond roux with about 2 tbsp each butter and flour, whisk in the strained hot broth, simmer to thicken, then finish with cream off the heat.
- The egg-yolk versionThe alternative thickening is a liaison. Whisk the yolks with a little flour and butter, temper with hot broth a ladle at a time, return to the pan and keep it below a boil; the flour makes it more forgiving than a pure yolk liaison, but hard boiling can still curdle it.
- YieldA 4 lb stuffed joint serves eight generously, and the cold sliced remainder is arguably better than the hot — the Victorians counted on it for the next day's supper table.
Boiled meat joints were a staple of the English middle-class table well into the twentieth century, and veal in particular was prized for its pallor: a white joint with a white sauce read as refined in a way that roast beef did not. The insistence here on delicacy of colour is the whole point of the technique — the same leg roasted would have browned, and browning was precisely what the cook was to avoid. The mushroom ketchup and mushroom powder in the sauce are a reminder of how English kitchens got savoury depth before commercial stock cubes; mushroom ketchup predates tomato ketchup in Britain by a good stretch, and bottles of it, along with jars of powdered dried mushroom, were ordinary storecupboard items. Here the cooking liquor is not discarded but becomes the sauce.