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VEAL, KNUCKLE OF, BOILED (another way) (As veal is insipid it)
As veal is insipid, it is a meat seldom boiled. The knuckle, however, being chiefly composed of cartilage, is frequently boiled. It is sometimes boiled with rice, and the gravy drawn from it is flavoured with onions, a little mace, and a few peppercorns. With the broth half a pint of cream or milk may be mixed, and tho whole--meat, rice, and broth--served together in a tureen. If sent up separately, the veal will require a sauce of parsley and butter, as well as the accompaniment of boiled bacon on a separate dish.
A loosely written method rather than a numbered recipe, but the dish is clear enough: a veal shank simmered slowly with rice, the broth enriched with cream and served either as one tureen or as separate courses.
- What the knuckle isThe knuckle is the lower part of the leg — sold now as veal shank or hind shin, usually cut into thick rounds as osso buco. Ask for it whole and uncut if you want the single joint the book assumes; one shank of 3-4 lb serves four.
- Never actually boil itThis is the hinge. A hard boil turns veal shank stringy and clouds the broth. Bring it up to temperature, skim the grey foam that rises in the first ten minutes, then hold it at a bare shiver — around 180F — for 2½ to 3 hours, until the meat pulls from the bone.
- The cartilage is the point"Chiefly composed of cartilage" is the recommendation, not a complaint. The collagen in the joint dissolves into gelatine and gives the broth body; this is the same reason veal knuckle is the backbone of classical stock.
- Rice timingDo not put the rice in at the start, or three hours later it will be paste. Add about 6 oz of long-grain rice for the final 20-25 minutes, or cook it separately and combine — the latter gives a cleaner broth.
- Mace and peppercornsMace is the outer covering of nutmeg, sold as dried blades or ground; a single blade or a pinch of ground is enough. Put the peppercorns and mace in with an onion at the start and strain them out before serving.
- Adding the creamHalf a pint here is half an imperial pint, about 10 fl oz or 285 ml (roughly 1¼ US cups). Stir it in off the heat, or at most at a low simmer; boiling cream into a gelatinous broth will make it look broken and greasy.
- Parsley and butterIn Victorian usage this generally meant melted butter sauce — butter thickened with a little flour and cooking liquid, with chopped parsley stirred through — rather than simply butter with herbs in it. It is what carries the flavour if you serve the meat dry.
- The baconBoiled bacon alongside is doing the seasoning work. Use a piece of unsmoked back bacon or a small gammon joint, simmered separately, and slice it thin; the salt is what answers the "insipid" complaint in the first line.
Cassell's is candid about veal's reputation: pale, mild and in need of help from bacon, ham or a well-seasoned sauce. The knuckle was the least fashionable end of an already modest joint, and dishes like this one arguably sat near the boundary between family cookery and invalid cookery, easy to eat, the sort of thing one can imagine sent up in a tureen to someone convalescing, though nothing in the recipe says so. The same properties that made it dull on the plate made it prized in the professional kitchen, where veal knuckle was and remains the standard source of gelatine in a stockpot, which is why French practice built its stocks on it while English households were boiling it with rice and apologising for the taste.