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VEAL, FILLET OF (French way)
Trim, stuff, and truss a fillet of veal as directed for VEAL, FILLET OF, ROASTED. If liked, the surface and the sides of the fillet may be larded with strips of fat bacon. Cover the bottom of a stewpan with sliced vegetables and with thin slices of bacon or ham. Lay the veal on these, moisten with a pint of stock, or water, lay slices of bacon upon it, cover closely, and if possible put live embers on the lid of the pan, and let the fillet braise very gently over a slow fire till tender. Baste frequently with the gravy. Take it up, drain it, and put it in the oven. Strain the sauce, and boil quickly for a few minutes; then baste the meat with it till it looks bright and glossy. Serve on a hot dish, and send any kind of cooked vegetable to table with it, together with brown Italian or tomato sauce as an accompaniment. If liked, the gravy in which it was stewed may be simply strained and thickened with brown thickening, then flavoured with pepper, lemon-juice, and light wine; and to enrich it oysters or stewed mushrooms may be added. Time to stew the veal, at least half an hour to each pound. Probable cost, veal, 1s. 1d. per pound.
This is a straightforward braise dressed up in late-Victorian language: a stuffed leg of veal cooked slowly on a bed of vegetables and bacon, then glazed with its own reduced cooking liquor. A few of the terms mean something other than what a modern cook assumes.
- "Fillet of veal" is not the tenderloinIn British butchery of this period the fillet is the top of the leg — roughly what a US market sells as veal round or top round, a solid boneless joint; the size varies a good deal. Ask for a leg roast tied for braising, not a loin fillet, which would be far too small and too lean for half an hour per pound.
- The hinge: keep it barely simmeringBraised veal turns dry and stringy the moment the liquid boils. Hold the pan at a bare tremble, around 300–325F in the oven if you would rather not manage a burner, and keep it tightly covered.
- Embers on the lidCoals on the lid gave heat from above as well as below, so the joint cooked evenly without scorching on the base; French braising and daube pots were commonly made with a sunken lid to hold them. A heavy Dutch oven in a moderate oven does the same job; there is no need for the coals.
- The timing is generousHalf an hour per pound suits a large, well-larded leg, but judge by feel and temperature rather than the clock: the joint should be tender to a skewer, and the stuffing at the centre should reach 165F/74C, the standard mark for a stuffed joint. A 4 lb joint will often be there in around two hours.
- The bed of vegetablesThis is a mirepoix in all but name — carrot, onion, celery, a little turnip, sliced thick enough not to disintegrate. It is flavouring for the sauce, not a side dish; the vegetables sent to table are cooked separately, as the recipe says.
- Brown thickeningA cooked brown roux, flour and butter or the fat from the pan, taken to a nut colour. Whisk it into the strained liquor off the boil, or simply reduce the strained sauce hard and skip the flour for a glossier modern finish.
- "Light wine" and the oystersProbably a dry white; in this period "light" generally pointed to low alcohol and body rather than to sweetness. If you add oysters, drop them into the finished hot sauce for a minute or two only; long stewing makes them rubbery.
- GlazingBasting repeatedly with the reduced sauce in a hot oven builds the bright lacquer that gives the dish its point. Have the sauce reduced to a syrupy nap first, or it will run off rather than cling.
- YieldA 4 lb stuffed joint serves eight to ten, and it slices better after fifteen minutes' rest — though the original assumes it goes to table whole and hot for carving in the dining room.
The "French way" here is braising proper, as distinct from the roasted fillet the recipe cross-references: meat set on a bed of vegetables and bacon in a closed pot, cooked in a little liquid, then finished by glazing with its own reduced juices — a technique French kitchens broadly distinguished from poêler, which used butter and effectively no liquid at all. Cassell's compilers were writing for households that had absorbed a generation of French professional practice through Ude, Soyer and Francatelli, and the instruction to set live embers on the lid preserves a pre-range method that relied on a pot with a recessed rim made to hold coals. Veal suited this treatment because it is lean and mild: the bacon laid over and under it, and the strips larded through the surface, supply the fat the meat lacks, while the oysters or mushrooms offered for the sauce were a common Victorian way of enriching a pale gravy. The quoted price of 1s 1d a pound places veal as a respectable but not extravagant joint for a middle-class table of the later nineteenth century.