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Veal, Fillet of, Roasted
Have the fillet cut to the size required. Remove the bone, and fill the cavity with good veal forcemeat (see VEAL FORCEMEAT). Cut the flap slightly, and lay forcemeat under it. Draw the flap round, skewer the veal, bind it firmly into a round shape, skewer the skin which has been sent with the veal over the forcemeat and the fat, flour the fillet, and put it down at some distance from the fire, then move it gradually nearer till done enough, and baste frequently. Let the outside be well browned, though it must not be burnt. Remove the skin, skewers, and tape, and put the veal on a hot dish. Pour melted butter coloured with browning or some good veal gravy (see VEAL, GRAVY FOR) round it, and garnish with sliced lemon. A pig's cheek, a boiled tongue, or small pieces of bacon or ham should be served with roast veal. It is always well to prepare plenty of stuffing, so that it may be used to flavour a mince if the remains of the veal are served in that form. As it is a little difficult to keep the stuffing in the veal when it is roasted before the fire, many cooks prefer to bake it in a moderate oven. When this plan is adopted the veal must be basted frequently. The joint should be roasted slowly, or the outside will be burnt before the meat is done through, and underdone veal is most unwholesome. Time to roast, twenty-eight minutes to the pound; half an hour to the pound in frosty weather. Probable cost, 1s. 1d. per pound.
A large stuffed roast written for a spit in front of an open fire, with a note that many cooks already preferred the oven. The oven method is the practical one, and the instructions translate cleanly once the cut and the temperatures are pinned down.
- What the fillet isIn British butchery a fillet of veal is the cut from the top of the hind leg, equivalent to a whole top round, not the tenderloin an American reader would expect. Ask for a boneless leg roast of 4-6 lb, with the flap of thin muscle left attached so it can be folded round the stuffing.
- The skin sent with the vealThe skin and fat covering the butcher removed from the joint and sent along with it; skewered back over the top it acted as a self-baster on a lean cut. A barding of thin bacon or sliced fatback tied over the roast does the same job.
- Fire to oven"Put it down at some distance from the fire, then move it gradually nearer" describes controlling radiant heat on a spit. In an oven, roast at 325F throughout, and raise to 425F for the last ten to fifteen minutes if the outside is not brown enough.
- Time and temperatureTwenty-eight minutes to the pound gives thoroughly cooked meat by Victorian standards and dry meat by ours. Cook to an internal reading of 145F at the thickest point, taken away from the stuffing, then rest 15-20 minutes; on a 5 lb joint that is roughly 20 minutes per pound at 325F.
- The stuffed centreThe one thing to watch is the forcemeat, which sits in the coldest part of the joint and typically contains egg and suet or pork. Check the centre of the stuffing separately and take it to 165F, or bake the surplus forcemeat in a dish alongside, which is easier and is what the recipe half suggests when it tells you to make plenty.
- Tying itSkewers and "tape" mean metal skewers and cotton butcher's tape. Butcher's twine at inch-and-a-half intervals holds the round shape better and is easier to cut away at the table.
- Melted butter and browning"Melted butter" in a book of this date is a flour-thickened butter sauce, not clarified butter. "Browning" is gravy browning, a burnt-sugar colouring; a good veal or chicken stock reduced with the pan juices is the better modern choice.
- Yield and accompanimentsA 5 lb stuffed fillet serves eight to ten. The pig's cheek, tongue, bacon or ham is not decoration but seasoning: veal is very lean and mild, and the cured pork supplies the salt and fat the meat lacks.
- The stated cost1s 1d per pound places this among the more expensive butcher's meats of the period. The recipe also assumes leftovers, telling you to prepare plenty of stuffing so that it can flavour a mince.
Roast fillet of veal with forcemeat was one of the standard large joints of the English dining room through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Cassell's treats it as a fixture rather than a novelty. Veal came from bull calves surplus to the dairy herd, but the meat is lean, pale and mild, which explains almost every instruction here: the fat skin skewered over the top, the constant basting, the stuffing packed into the bone cavity, and the insistence that a pig's cheek, tongue or bacon appear on the same table. The warning that "underdone veal is most unwholesome" reflects a long-standing suspicion of pale meats and pork alike, often linked to fears of parasites and of what was called immature flesh; the longer allowance in frosty weather -- half an hour to the pound instead of twenty-eight minutes -- is a candid admission of how much an open-fire roast depended on the temperature of the room it stood in. The note about saving stuffing to flavour a mince is the authentic voice of the period's household economy, where a joint was expected to reappear at two or three further meals.