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VEAL, KNUCKLE OF, BOILED (another way) (Cut the shank-bone)
Cut the shank-bone from a knuckle of veal. This may be stewed separately in a little water to make white sauce. Put the joint into a saucepan, cover with cold water, and when it begins to simmer throw in a tea-spoonful of salt to assist in throwing up the scum, skim carefully, and let it boil gently until done enough. Serve the joint on a hot dish, with either white sauce or parsley and butter poured over it, and more in a tureen. Garnish with slices of lemon and veal forcemeat balls. A piece of boiled bacon, a pig's cheek, or slices of fried bacon should be sent to table with it. Time to boil, fully twenty minutes per pound from the time the water boils. Probable cost, 9 1/2d. or 10d. per pound. Sufficient, a joint weighing six pounds, for six or eight persons.
A plainly written boiled joint from the era when veal was a cheap butcher's staple. Almost everything hinges on heat control and on not wasting the gelatinous cooking liquor.
- The cutA knuckle of veal is the shank, fore or hind, on the bone, the same cut sold today as osso buco when it is sawn into rounds. Ask for it whole and undivided; a six-pound piece may need ordering in advance.
- The shank-boneCutting off the narrow end of the bone and stewing it separately gives a gelatine-rich liquor for the accompanying white sauce. It is the same trick as making veal stock, in miniature, and it is worth doing rather than skipping.
- Simmer, never boilThe recipe says "boil gently," and gently is the operative word: the water should barely tremble. A hard rolling boil tightens the muscle fibres and leaves shank meat stringy, while steady poaching just below a simmer breaks down the connective tissue instead.
- Cold water start and the saltStarting in cold water draws soluble proteins to the surface where they coagulate as scum. The recipe adds a teaspoon of salt as the pot begins to simmer, saying it assists in throwing up the scum; skim carefully at that point, and keep skimming as more rises.
- TimingTwenty minutes per pound gives about two hours for a six-pound joint, which is realistic for a collagen-heavy shank. Judge by feel rather than the clock: the meat should give easily to a skewer and begin to loosen from the bone.
- Parsley and butterThis is the Victorian name for a sauce built on the old 'melted butter', a flour-and-butter sauce with chopped parsley stirred through, not simply parsley in melted butter. Made with the liquor from the shank-bone it is considerably better.
- Forcemeat ballsVeal forcemeat in this period meant breadcrumbs, suet, lemon zest, herbs and egg, rolled small and fried or poached. They can be poached in the cooking liquor in the last ten minutes.
- The baconNot decoration. Veal is lean and mild, and the salt and smoke of bacon or a pig's cheek supply what the joint lacks. Keep it in the menu even if you shorten everything else.
- Cost and yield"9 1/2d. or 10d. per pound" is pre-decimal pence, of no use now beyond showing veal was everyday meat. The stated yield of six to eight from a six-pound joint still holds, and the strained cooking liquor is a first-rate white stock.
The knuckle was a useful part of the calf in the late nineteenth-century British kitchen: full of collagen, it gave both a dinner and the clear, faintly setting white stock on which fricassees and clear soups depended. Veal itself was more common on English tables then than now, a by-product of the dairy trade in a country with a great many milk cows, and the pale, bland meat was habitually married to something salty, hence the pig's cheek or fried bacon sent up alongside. The lemon slices and forcemeat balls are the standard Victorian garnish for boiled white meats, meant to supply acidity and seasoning that the boiling itself has washed away.