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Veal, Haricot
Take the best end of a small neck of veal. Shorten the bones, and either divide the meat into cutlets, or leave it whole. Put it into a stewpan, pour over it a pint of good brown gravy, and let it simmer gently until three parts cooked. Boil in stock in a separate saucepan a pint of freshly-gathered and shelled young peas, half a pint of carrots and turnips cut into shapes, a small cauliflower, half a dozen young onions, a sliced cucumber, a cabbage lettuce cut into quarters, a pound of haricot beans soaked overnight, or any suitable vegetables. When these are nearly tender, add a little salt and cayenne. Shortly before the haricot is to be served, put the vegetables with the veal, and let all simmer gently together for ten minutes. Put the veal on a dish, arrange the vegetables round it, and garnish with forcemeat balls. Send fried bacon to table on a separate dish. If more convenient, some of these vegetables may be omitted, and when boiling the vegetables it should be remembered that some kinds will need to boil longer than others, according to their nature and age. The appearance of the veal will be improved if it is brightly browned before being stewed, and a little acid will improve its flavour for many. Time to simmer the veal alone, about half an hour. Probable cost, veal, 1s. per pound.
A Victorian ragout in which the meat is the centrepiece and the vegetables are cooked separately and assembled around it. The main trap is treating the dried haricot beans like the other vegetables.
- The beans need their own pot and their own hourA pound of dried haricots, even soaked overnight, will take 1 to 1.5 hours of gentle simmering, long after the peas and cauliflower are done. Cook them separately from the start and add them to the assembly at the end, or the rest of the vegetables will collapse waiting for them.
- Pints are imperialA Cassell's pint is 20 fl oz, so a pint of gravy is about 2.5 US cups and half a pint is 1.25 cups. Shelled peas by the pint means roughly 12 oz of shelled peas, or about 2 lb in the pod.
- Neck of veal, shortened bonesAsk for a veal rack or neck end and have the butcher cut the rib bones short so the joint fits the pan. Cut into cutlets it is one rib each; left whole it carves at table. Boneless veal shoulder can be substituted, but will want longer.
- Half an hour is for cutletsHalf an hour suits cutlets -- The stated "about half an hour" reads as a time for cutlets in simmering gravy; a whole neck joint will want appreciably longer at a bare simmer, and should be pulled before the meat frays.
- Brown it first, and use the acidThe two afterthoughts at the end of the recipe are the ones worth following. Searing the veal hard before it goes into the gravy is the difference between a grey stew and a glossy one, and a spoonful of lemon juice or dry sherry stirred in at the finish lifts a dish that is otherwise all sweet vegetables.
- "Cut into shapes" and "cabbage lettuce"Carrots and turnips were commonly turned into small barrels or olives with a knife, or stamped with cutters; even batons will do, so long as they match in size and cook evenly. A cabbage lettuce is a firm, round-hearted sort such as a butterhead, quartered and given no more than two or three minutes.
- Forcemeat ballsSmall poached or fried dumplings of minced veal or bacon bound with breadcrumbs, suet, egg and lemon zest. Nothing in the dish depends on them; they are garnish, and can be left out or replaced by fried breadcrumbs.
- Brown gravyNot a flour-thickened brown sauce from a packet but a reduced veal or beef stock, lightly thickened. A good homemade veal stock reduced by half gives the right body.
- YieldAs written, with a full neck and a pound of beans, this serves six to eight generously. Cutting the vegetable list back, as the recipe invites, is the sensible move for four.
The haricot of this recipe has little to do with the beans, despite their presence in the pot. The word is generally traced to the Old French harigoter, to cut up or mangle, and a haricot de mouton — chopped mutton stewed with root vegetables — was a fixture of French cookery long before the American bean reached Europe and acquired a confusingly similar name. English cooks took the dish over wholesale in the eighteenth century, and by the time Cassell's Dictionary was compiled in the 1870s the two senses had thoroughly merged, so that an English haricot was expected to contain haricots. What the entry really records is a late-Victorian style of service: the meat kept whole and handsome, a small market garden of vegetables arranged around it, bacon and forcemeat on the side, and a quiet acknowledgement in the final lines that the reader will probably want to leave half of it out.