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Veal, Fillet of, Braised
Cover the bottom of a braising-pan, or stewpan, with sliced bacon, a carrot, turnip, and onion, all sliced, add a few celery-stalks, and a gill of stock made from veal bones. Take a fillet of veal and lay it on the bed of vegetables and bacon; put more bacon on top; add a few peppercorns and a clove or two, and put on the lid. Simmer to reduce the gravy, then add more stock to half the depth of the meat, and cook gently for about three hours for a fillet weighing five or six pounds. When done, drain the meat, and put it on a hot dish. Strain the gravy, thicken it with brown roux to a creamy consistency, season to taste, and add a glass of light wine. Pour the gravy round the meat, and send to table very hot.
A classic pot-braise of a large lean roast, written for a coal range and a heavy lidded braising-pan. Almost everything here still works; the units and the cut are what need translating.
- What "fillet of veal" meansIn British butchery this is the round, cut from the top of the leg, sold in the US as veal round or leg roast rather than tenderloin. It is very lean, which is why the recipe buries it in bacon; a boned and tied shoulder braises more forgivingly if the leg is hard to find.
- A gillAbout 5 fl oz (150 ml) in British measure, a little over half a cup. It is only enough to keep the vegetables from scorching in the first stage, not to cook the meat in.
- The bacon is fat, not flavourUse unsmoked fatty streaky bacon or sheets of fresh pork fatback. Modern smoked, sugar-cured bacon will dominate the sauce and the delicate veal stock behind it.
- The hinge: reduce before you add liquid"Simmer to reduce the gravy" is the step that makes the dish. The small amount of stock must cook down until the vegetables and meat juices form a sticky brown film on the pan bottom; only then does the second addition of stock become the sauce. Skip it and you get pale, watery gravy.
- Heat and timeBring to a bare simmer and cook gently under the lid; the original is a stovetop braise, though a low oven (roughly 300-325F) holds the heat more evenly if you prefer. Three hours is right for 5-6 lb; test with a skewer, which should meet no resistance, rather than watching the clock. Braised veal leg needs to pass well beyond pink and reach roughly 175-180F internally before it slices tender.
- Liquid levelHalf the depth of the meat, as written, and no more. A fully submerged roast poaches and the sauce never concentrates. Turn the meat once at the halfway point so both sides sit in the stock.
- Brown roux and wineEqual weights of butter and flour cooked to a hazelnut colour; about 1 oz of each will thicken a pint of strained braising liquid to the "creamy consistency" asked for. A "glass of light wine" is imprecise -- period wineglass measures were often reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so allow somewhere between 2 and 4 fl oz of a dry white or a light-bodied red; simmer it a minute or two so it does not taste raw.
- YieldA 5-6 lb boneless roast serves 10 to 12. It slices better after 15 minutes' rest, kept warm under foil while the sauce is finished.
Braising in the French sense - a large joint set on a bed of aromatics and bacon, barely moistened, and cooked slowly under a tight lid - was a technique English cookery writers of the later nineteenth century took some trouble to explain. The vegetable and bacon foundation is close to what French kitchens called a matignon, though a braising bed of this kind was as often described simply as a mirepoix; its job is to insulate the meat from direct heat and to build the fond that becomes the sauce. Veal was well suited to the method: prized in Victorian and Edwardian households for its pale colour and mild flavour, the leg is also almost fatless and dries out badly when roasted, so it was habitually larded, barded with bacon, or braised. The instruction to make the moistening stock from veal bones reflects a kitchen that kept a stockpot going as a matter of course, and the finishing glass of wine and brown roux mark the dish as belonging to the grander end of the domestic repertoire.