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VEAL, LOIN OF (a la Creme)
Prepare and roast a loin of veal in the usual way. About a quarter of an hour before it is done enough take up the dripping-tin, put a clean dish in its place, and baste the veal continually with boiling cream. This will impart to its surface a rich brown coating of delicious flavour. Dish the veal, and in doing so handle it carefully, for fear of injuring its surface. Pour two table-spoonfuls of boiling water into the dish over which it was basted, and in this stir the brown gravy which has dropped from the joint, and add it to half a pint of good white sauce. Pour some of this round the veal, and serve the rest in a tureen. Ham, tongue, or pickled pork will be needed as an accompaniment.
A roast finished by basting with scalded cream, which sets into a browned glaze. Everything depends on the last quarter of an hour.
- The hinge: boiling cream, and only at the endThe recipe is specific that the cream is boiling and that it goes on in the final quarter of an hour. Cream that is not properly hot, or applied earlier in the roasting, is unlikely to set into the browned coating described.
- Swap the pan outThe instruction to remove the dripping-tin and slide a clean dish underneath is not fussiness. The recipe then uses what falls into that clean dish as the base of the sauce, so it needs to be free of the accumulated roasting fat.
- "Roast in the usual way"The book gives no oven setting. A modern equivalent for a bone-in veal loin is a moderate oven of about 325F, with the last stretch as described, cooking to 145F at the centre (the current USDA figure for veal roasts) and resting before carving. Veal loin is lean and dries out if taken much past that.
- Half a pint of white sauceCassell's is British, so half an imperial pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. The "good white sauce" of the period means a béchamel or, better here, a velouté built on veal stock.
- Deglazing quantityTwo tablespoons of boiling water is a small amount for loosening the browned cream from the dish. Scrape with a wooden spoon and, if you wish, strain the result before adding it to the sauce.
- Handle the joint gentlyThe warning about injuring the surface is real: the cream glaze is a thin skin that tears if you fork the roast. Lift with a carving fork in the bone and a flat spatula underneath.
- The accompanimentHam, tongue or pickled pork is there for salt and colour against a pale, mild joint. A few thin slices of good cooked ham laid round the dish does the same work.
- YieldA bone-in veal loin of 4 to 5 lb will serve roughly six to eight. The recipe itself states no number.
Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery dates from the 1870s. Veal is a pale, mild, lean joint, and the recipe treats the salty accompaniment -- ham, tongue or pickled pork -- as required rather than optional.