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VEAL, NECK OF (a la Creme)
Take the best end of a neck of veal. Loosen the flesh from the ends of the bones. Cut the bones short to make the joint as square as possible, then fold and skewer the flank underneath. Wrap the joint in oiled paper, fasten it upon the spit, and put it down at a moderate distance from a clear fire. Baste liberally. Remove the paper, and baste the joint with a pint of good white sauce or with cream. This will impart to the surface of the veal a rich brown appearance and a delicious flavour. Serve the meat on a hot dish, pour white sauce round it, and send a little more to table in a tureen. If liked, white mushroom sauce may be served with the veal, as well as, or instead of, bechamel. Some cooks before roasting the veal let it lie in oil for a couple of hours, with a little pepper, salt, and powdered sweet herbs sprinkled over it. Time to roast the veal, two hours to two hours and a quarter, or twenty-five minutes to the pound.
A rack of veal roasted on a spit, then finished by basting with cream or béchamel — the sugars and milk solids in the sauce are what give the pale meat its brown surface. Everything else in the method is straightforward once the spit is translated to an oven.
- The joint"Best end of neck" is what a butcher now calls a rack of veal: the rib section, five to seven bones. Ask for it chined and the bones shortened, which spares you the trimming described here. A rack of this kind runs about 3 1/2 to 5 lb bone-in, serving five or six.
- Spit to ovenSet the rack on a trivet or a bed of bones in a shallow tin so the heat circulates as it would before a fire. Roast at 400F for the first 20 minutes, then drop to 325F for the remainder. The "moderate distance from a clear fire" is asking for steady radiant heat rather than a blast.
- TimingTwenty-five minutes to the pound gives about an hour and three-quarters for a 4 lb rack; the recipe's two to two and a quarter hours implies a joint nearer 5 lb. Either way it is well past done by modern taste. Cook to an internal temperature of 145F at the thickest point away from bone — usually 70 to 90 minutes for this size — and rest it 15 minutes. Veal is lean and dries out fast beyond that.
- The oiled paperButtered parchment, or foil. The recipe wraps the whole joint, so wrap or cover it rather than laying a sheet on top. It shields the surface while the interior comes up to temperature. Remove it for the last 25 to 30 minutes so the basting can take effect.
- The hinge: basting with sauceDo not start the cream or béchamel early. Milk solids scorch and turn bitter over a long roast. Brush it on in thin coats during the final 20 minutes only, returning the joint to the oven between coats, so the layers dry and colour rather than pooling in the tin.
- White sauceA pint is 20 fl oz in this British book, about 2 1/2 US cups — more than enough for basting, plating and the tureen. Make it slack enough to brush; a béchamel stiff enough to coat a spoon will slide off the meat rather than cling.
- The oil marinadeWorth doing. Two hours in oil with pepper, salt and powdered sweet herbs — thyme and marjoram were among the usual ones — seasons the surface and helps browning. Wipe off the excess before wrapping in paper.
- Mushroom sauceThe "white mushroom sauce" of the period is béchamel with sliced button mushrooms sweated in butter, kept pale by avoiding any colour on the pan. Add a squeeze of lemon at the end to keep it from tasting flat.
Neck of veal à la crème belongs to the Anglo-French repertoire that dominated late Victorian and Edwardian professional cooking, when English kitchens adopted French names and sauces wholesale — Cassell's runs many such entries, often with the French tag and an English method. The instruction to baste with cream rather than pan drippings addresses a real problem with veal: it has almost no fat of its own and will not brown well, so the cook borrows browning from the milk solids and sugars in the sauce. The recipe also captures a technology in transition. It is written for a spit before an open fire, often said to be the standard method for a good joint through much of the nineteenth century, at a point when closed ranges were already common in middle-class houses; cookery books went on giving spit directions long after many of their readers had stopped using one.