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Veal, Neck of, Larded
To lard a neck of veal, first trim it by shortening the long bones and sawing off the chinebone. With a sharp knife remove the skin and sinew which cover the fillet, leaving the bones covered with fat, and lard the fillet thus bared closely and evenly with strips of fat bacon. Afterwards braise the veal according to the instructions already given, and be careful that the liquor is high enough only to reach just to the surface of the veal, and that it does not cover the larding. When the veal is tender, take it up, and keep it hot. Strain the liquor, skim the fat from it, and boil it down till it begins to thicken. Put the veal in the oven, and baste constantly for a quarter of an hour, or till it has a bright glossy appearance. Place it on a dish, and send good brown sauce and cooked vegetables to table with it.
A braised-then-glazed veal neck, from the era when larding needles were standard equipment. The technique still works; most of the effort now goes into sourcing the cut.
- The cutA neck (or best end) of veal is a rib rack with the eye of meat running along the bones. Ask a butcher for a bone-in veal rack with the chine bone removed and the long rib bones shortened, which is what the trimming instructions describe; note that the recipe leaves the bones covered with fat rather than scraped clean. A six- or seven-bone rack would serve roughly four to six.
- LardingStrips of firm fat back or unsmoked fatty bacon are threaded through the lean eye with a larding needle, spaced evenly so the meat bastes itself from within. Without a needle, the practical substitute is to bard the surface: tie thin sheets of fat over the meat and remove them before glazing.
- Liquid level is the hingeThe braising liquor must come only to the surface of the meat, never over the larded top. Submerged lardons boil out and the exposed surface never develops the skin that takes the glaze.
- Braising temperatureThe recipe refers back to its own braising instructions and gives no figures. In a modern oven a covered braise at a low heat, in the region of 300-325F, for something like 1 1/2 to 2 hours, will bring a rack to the point where the meat gives easily at the bone. Veal neck has plenty of connective tissue and rewards low heat; hard boiling makes it stringy.
- Reducing the liquor"Boil it down till it begins to thicken" means reducing to a syrupy glaze that coats the back of a spoon, no flour involved. Skim the fat first or the glaze will be greasy rather than glossy.
- The glazing stepFifteen minutes in a hot oven, basting every few minutes with the reduction. The point is lacquer, not further cooking, so the meat should already be tender when it goes in.
- Brown sauceA Victorian 'good brown sauce' of this kind is generally a brown roux thinned with veal or beef stock and reduced. A modern reduced veal stock does the same job with less work.
- VegetablesCook carrots, turnips and small onions separately and glaze them in a little of the reduced liquor.
Larding belongs to a period when butchered veal and beef were far leaner than the grain-finished meat sold today, and a large lean joint would simply dry out over a long cook. Threading it with strips of pork fat was the standard remedy. The braise-then-glaze finish here is straight out of the French repertoire that Cassell's was busy translating for British middle-class cooks: the joint is cooked gently in a shallow bath of stock, then the stock is reduced to a glaze and brushed on in a hot oven, giving the shine that a plain roast could not. The practice faded through the twentieth century as fattier meat and reliable oven thermostats made it unnecessary, though barding a lean roast with fat or caul is the same idea in simpler form.