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Veal, Hashed
Any joint of veal not over-cooked may be hashed, and will be found excellent. Cut the meat into neat slices free from skin and gristle. Cover these, and put them aside till wanted. Slice two onions, and fry them in butter, dredge a little flour upon them, pour over them half a pint of stock or water, and add a small bunch of sweet herbs, a quarter of a tea-spoonful of grated nutmeg, a quarter of a tea-spoonful of grated lemon-rind, and a little salt and white pepper. Let all simmer for a few minutes till the liquor is strong and pleasantly flavoured. Strain the gravy, put the veal into it, let it simmer till it is hot without allowing it to boil, then serve on a hot dish, and garnish with toasted sippets. Time, altogether, about three-quarters of an hour.
A leftover-joint dish that depends on restraint: the veal is already cooked, so the pan is only bringing it up to temperature in a flavoured gravy.
- Never let it boilThe hinge of the dish. Cooked veal slices turned in simmering gravy for a few minutes stay tender; a hard boil will tighten and dry them. Keep the pan at a bare shiver, well below boiling, until the meat is hot through.
- Half a pint of stockAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, so a scant cup and a quarter. The recipe allows water, but veal or light chicken stock gives a better result, since there is nothing else in the pan to build body.
- Sweet herbsA Victorian bunch of sweet herbs was typically some combination of parsley, thyme and marjoram, often with a bay leaf. Tie it with string so it lifts out cleanly, though the gravy is strained anyway.
- Dredging flourAbout a tablespoon over two fried onions is right. Let it cook on the onions for a minute before the liquid goes in or the gravy tastes pasty.
- Straining the gravyThe onions are flavouring, not substance, and get discarded with the herbs. If you would rather keep them, chop them fine and skip the straining, but the sauce will be less refined than intended.
- Toasted sippetsTriangles of bread toasted or fried in butter, arranged round the edge of the dish. Cut them from a firm white loaf and add them at the last moment so they stay crisp.
- Timing and yieldTiming -- The three-quarters of an hour covers slicing, the onion base and the reheating together, not 45 minutes over heat.
Hashes of this kind were a fixture of nineteenth-century English cookery books because the roasting joints of the period were large and households ate their way through them across several days. The technique of slicing cold cooked meat and warming it in a freshly made, strained gravy applies equally to mutton, beef or fowl. The seasoning here, with nutmeg and grated lemon rind, is characteristic of how English cooks handled veal, a mild meat that was generally thought to need aromatic support. The insistence that the meat must not boil, and the note that the joint must not have been overcooked in the first place, are the two pieces of real instruction, and they reflect a period when reheating leftovers well was a measure of a cook's competence rather than an afterthought.