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VEAL, JUGGED (another way)
Cut some slices of veal, and put them into an earthenware jug with a blade of mace, a little pepper, salt, and nutmeg, a sprig of sweet herbs, and a bit of lemon-peel. Cover the jug closely, that the steam may not get out; set it in a pot of boiling water, and about three hours will do the meat. About half an hour before it is done, put in a bit of butter rolled in flour, and a little lemon-juice or lemon pickle. Turn the whole out of the jug into a dish; take out the herbs and lemon-peel, and send the veal to table garnished with lemon.
Jugging is a water-bath braise: the meat cooks in nothing but its own juices inside a sealed vessel standing in simmering water. The whole method depends on that seal, so start there.
- The seal is everythingNo liquid goes into the jug — the veal must steam in the juices it releases, and any steam that escapes takes the sauce with it. Cover with a tight lid or a doubled sheet of foil and tie it down, or use a wide-mouth canning jar with the ring only loosely fingertight so pressure can vent without the contents drying out.
- The vesselA stoneware jug or a heatproof glass or ceramic jar of about 1 quart. Stand it on a folded cloth or a trivet in a deep pot so it does not rattle directly on the base, and keep the water at least halfway up the sides at a steady simmer, topping up with boiling water as it evaporates over three hours.
- Cut of vealSlices from the shoulder or breast, about 3/4 inch thick, suit this long gentle cooking. Modern leg cutlets or scaloppine are far too lean and will be dry and stringy after three hours; buy stewing veal instead.
- Blade of maceA blade is a whole piece of the lacy outer covering of nutmeg. If you cannot find it, about 1/4 teaspoon ground mace, but add it late as the ground spice fades. It is not interchangeable with the nutmeg also called for, though both come from the same fruit.
- A sprig of sweet herbsIn period usage 'sweet herbs' covered a bundle of aromatic herbs, commonly parsley, thyme, marjoram or savory, sometimes with a bay leaf. Tying them together makes them easy to fish out, as the recipe requires.
- Butter rolled in flourA lump of butter worked or coated with flour, the period ancestor of beurre manie; about a tablespoon of each will do for this quantity. Dropped in at the end it thickens the accumulated juices as it melts, and can be left to do so without stirring, which would break up the slices.
- Lemon pickleA Georgian and Victorian store-cupboard staple of lemons salted and steeped with spice, sharp and salty at once. It has effectively vanished from shops. Lemon juice, which the recipe offers as the alternative, supplies the acidity though not the salt and spice; a little brine from preserved lemons is closer still.
- Timing and donenessThree hours in a water bath will not exceed boiling point, so the veal cannot overbrown, but it can overcook to shreds. Check at two and a half hours: it should be tender to a fork but still holding as slices.
- YieldAbout 1 1/2 lb of veal fills a quart jug and serves three to four. There is very little sauce by design — serve with rice or plain boiled potatoes rather than expecting gravy for the table.
Jugging is one of the oldest English methods still recognisable in Victorian cookbooks, and it belongs to a kitchen where the fire heated one large pot at a time. Sealing meat in a jug and standing it in that pot let a cook produce something close to a modern sous-vide braise with no separate oven and almost no fuel of its own, and the closed vessel concentrated flavour rather than diluting it in stock. The technique is most often met with hare, where jugged hare survived as a set piece well into the twentieth century, but Cassell's applies it to veal, a meat the period prized for its pale colour and mild flavour and habitually seasoned with mace, nutmeg and lemon rom seseventeschesth-century English cookery and still going strong late in the Victorian period. That this appears as "another way" is a reminder of how these large dictionaries worked: several versions of a dish set side by side, so a cook could pick the one that matched the vessels and larder actually to hand.