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Veal, Gravy For
Take the bones and trimmings of the veal, and if the bones are large enough break them into small pieces. Put them into a saucepan, and pour over them as much cold water as will cover them. Supposing there is a quart of water, add a bunch of parsley, two sprigs of thyme or marjoram, a quarter of the rind of a lemon thinly pared, a blade of mace, a pinch of pepper, and a few strips of bacon-rind if they are at hand. Cover the saucepan closely, and simmer the liquor gently till it is strong and pleasantly flavoured. Strain it, pour it into a bowl, and when cold remove the fat from the top. When wanted, thicken with a little brown thickening, and let it remain at the side of the fire till it has thrown up the fat. If brown thickening is not at hand, mix two table-spoonfuls of flour smoothly with a little cold water and a slice of butter, boil this with the stock, and add a little sugar-browning. Pour the fat from the pan under the veal, leaving the brown gravy untouched. Stir the sauce into the pan, dissolve a small lump of sugar in it, add a little salt, boil it up once more, and serve very hot. A little boiling cream may be added if liked. Time, one to two hours to simmer the stock.
A bone gravy built from the trimmings of a veal roast, thickened at the last minute and finished in the roasting pan. The method is sound; only the vocabulary and a few habits need translating.
- The hinge: degrease twiceThe hinge: degrease more than once -- the recipe chills the stock to lift the fat, lets the thickened sauce stand at the side of the fire to throw up more fat, and then asks you to pour the fat off the roasting pan while keeping the brown residue. Skipping these steps leaves a greasy sauce.
- Brown thickeningA Victorian standby: flour cooked in butter until it is a deep nut brown, kept in a jar for exactly this purpose. The fallback given here — flour slaked with cold water plus a slice of butter — works, but cook it in the stock for a good five minutes so the raw flour taste goes.
- Sugar-browningCaramel colouring, made by burning sugar dark and letting it down with water. Modern equivalents are a few drops of gravy browning or a well-browned roux; the effect is mainly colour, though burnt sugar also carries a faint bitterness.
- A blade of maceOne dried piece of the lacy covering of a nutmeg. About a quarter teaspoon of ground mace stands in, added late so it does not turn dusty.
- QuantitiesAn imperial quart is about 1.1 litres, and the aromatics are given per quart of water — scale them if you have more or fewer bones. Two tablespoonfuls of flour will thicken about a pint of finished gravy lightly.
- Simmering timeOne to two hours is right for a thin, clean-tasting bone stock rather than a gelatinous fond. Keep it at a bare tremble and skim; a rolling boil clouds it and drives fat into the liquid.
- The sugarA small lump, roughly a teaspoon. The recipe gives no reason for it, but a little sugar rounds off the bitterness of the browning. It should not read as sweet.
- CreamIf you add the boiling cream, do it off the heat at the very end. Poured into a boiling floury gravy it can catch and split.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; expect somewhat less than the quart of water you started with. The unthickened stock keeps about three days refrigerated, or freezes well.
This entry is worth attention because it demonstrates the household economy that underpinned Victorian roasting: nothing left the kitchen unused, and the bones and trimmings that came home with a joint of veal were expected to reappear as the sauce for that same joint. Veal was prized precisely for this, and its flesh is mild, so the resulting stock is pale, faintly sticky and neutral enough to serve as the base for a great many sauces, which is why French kitchens built the whole grammar of brown sauce on fond de veau. The two shortcuts named here, brown thickening and sugar-browning, were both made from scratch and both have been almost entirely replaced by commercial gravy browning and stock cubes. The lemon rind and mace are older-fashioned still, closer to eighteenth-century seasoning practice than to the reduced, wine-based gravies often associated with the growing French influence on English cookery, though that influence was established well before the later nineteenth century.