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Veal, Knuckle of, Ragout Of
Cut a knuckle of veal into small thick slices. Sprinkle a little pepper and salt on these, dredge flour upon them, and fry them in butter till they are brightly browned on both sides. Drain them, put them in a saucepan, and barely cover them with boiling stock or water. Throw in a bunch of sweet herbs, a blade of mace, and a few outer sticks of celery. Let the liquor boil up, remove the scum as it rises, then draw the saucepan to the side and let its contents simmer very gently till the veal is tender. Thicken the gravy with ground rice, add a table-spoonful of good store sauce, and serve. A few forcemeat balls may be added if liked. By way of variety, a pint of freshly-shelled young green peas may be stewed separately and served with the veal. Cooked veal may be cut into small pieces and stewed according to this recipe in a little of the liquor in which it was boiled mixed with milk. Whole rice or peas may be stewed with it. Time to simmer the veal, about two hours. Probable cost, knuckle of veal, 7d. per pound.
A straightforward braise of veal shank in its own gelatin-rich stock, thickened at the end. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the ingredients go by names that have dropped out of use.
- The cutA knuckle of veal is the shank — the same cut sold sawn across as osso buco. Ask for it in thick rounds rather than trying to slice it yourself; the bone and connective tissue are the point, since they give the braising liquor its body.
- Barely cover, and keep it lowThe instruction to draw the pan to the side is the hinge of the recipe. Veal shank held at a rolling boil turns stringy and the liquid goes cloudy; a bare shiver at the surface for around two hours gives meat that yields to a fork and a clear, gelatinous gravy.
- Store sauceA Victorian catch-all for a keeping sauce kept on the shelf for seasoning. Some, such as mushroom ketchup, were commonly made at home in quantity; others, such as Harvey's sauce or Worcestershire, were bought bottled. A tablespoon of mushroom ketchup or Worcestershire is a reasonable modern stand-in, added at the end for savour.
- Sweet herbs and maceSweet herbs means a tied bundle of parsley, thyme and bay — a bouquet garni. A blade of mace is one flake of the lacy aril from around the nutmeg, mildly warm and much gentler than grated nutmeg; a quarter teaspoon of ground mace substitutes, but remove nothing at the end since it will not strain out.
- Ground rice as thickenerGround rice is rice milled to a fine meal, coarser than rice flour but usable interchangeably here. Slake a tablespoon in cold water before stirring it into the simmering liquor, or it will lump. It gives a softer, slightly cloudy body compared with a flour roux.
- Forcemeat ballsSmall dumplings of minced veal or breadcrumbs bound with suet and egg, poached in the gravy for the last fifteen minutes. Entirely optional, and the dish is not lacking without them.
- The leftover versionThe final passage is a separate, quicker dish: cooked veal reheated in its cooking liquor let down with milk. Bring it only to a bare simmer — already-cooked veal held at a boil in milk toughens and the milk is liable to catch.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; a shank of around 3 lb, cut into slices, would probably serve about four. The peas stewed separately are the better of the two suggested garnishes; plain boiled rice or potatoes will take up the gravy.
- The priceSevenpence a pound places this among the cheaper meat dishes of the period, which is why a knuckle appears so often in economical cookery. It carries no useful modern meaning beyond that.
Cassell's arranges its entries alphabetically like a dictionary, and the knuckle earns its own long series of entries because it was the thrifty end of a joint that middle-class British kitchens bought constantly — full of gelatin, cheap, and capable of yielding both a dish and a stock. Veal itself was far more central to nineteenth-century English cooking than it is now, prized for the pale, neutral, gelatinous quality that made jellies and clear soups possible. The technique here — brown, barely cover, skim, then simmer at the side of the range — is the standard brown stew of the period, and the side of the range was a literal place: on a coal range the heat fell off sharply away from the firebox, so cooks moved pans rather than adjusting a dial. "Store sauce" is a small window onto the Victorian larder, where a row of bottled proprietary sauces stood ready to lend depth to dishes that had been cooked gently enough to need it.