Home › The Principles of Cookery › Veal, Neck of Roast
Veal, Neck of Roast
Take the best end of a neck of veal, saw off the chine-bone, and run a strong skewer through the joint lengthwise wrap in buttered paper, and tie it to the spit. If the joint is not wrapped in paper, it must be well dredged with flour, and basted very liberally with dripping from the pan. Put it down before a clear fire, and at a sufficient distance to keep it from being scorched. A quarter of an hour before the joint is taken up remove the paper, dredge the meat with flour, and baste with a little butter dissolved in a spoon. Pour the fat from the pan, leaving the brown sediment behind, stir into this a quarter of a pint of thin melted butter, and add a little salt; then strain the sauce into a saucepan, and let it boil. Put the joint on a hot dish pour part of the sauce round it, and send the rest to table in a tureen. Send the joint to table accompanied by bacon, ham, tongue, or pickled pork on a separate dish, and with a cut lemon on a plate. Parsley sauce, onion sauce, white sauce, and rice sauce may all be served with roast neck of veal. Time to roast the veal, an hour and a half to two hours, or twenty-five minutes to the pound. Probable cost, 11d. or 1s. per pound.
A spit-roast written for an open fire, with a pan sauce built from the drippings. The method translates to an oven with two adjustments: the joint needs turning or a rack, and the internal temperature matters more than the clock.
- The hinge: "melted butter" is not melted butterIn Victorian cookery books melted butter means a thin white sauce of butter, flour and water or milk, cooked out and simmered smooth. Stirring a quarter-pint of plain warm butter into the pan sediment gives you a greasy pan-wash, not a sauce.
- Quarter of a pintAn imperial gill, 5 fl oz, or a little over half a US cup. The recipe gives no number served; part is poured round the joint and the rest sent to table in a tureen.
- The jointThe best end of neck is the veal rack — the rib section. The chine is the backbone; asking the butcher to saw it off is what lets you carve between the ribs. A modern butcher will french or chine it on request.
- Fire to ovenFor an oven roast, 400F for the first 20 minutes to set the surface, then 325F to finish. The instruction to keep the joint "at a sufficient distance" from a clear fire is about avoiding scorch while the interior comes up, which is what the two-stage oven does.
- Buttered paperParchment, buttered and tied on, is the direct equivalent; foil works but steams the surface more. Either way it comes off for the last fifteen minutes so the outside colours, exactly as written.
- TimingTwenty-five minutes to the pound overcooks veal badly by current standards. Roast to an internal 145F at the thickest point away from bone and rest 15 minutes; a 4 lb rack usually needs 60 to 80 minutes total, not two hours.
- Dredging with flourThe repeated flour-and-baste builds a crust and also thickens whatever drips into the pan. Skip it if you want clear pan juices rather than the gravy the recipe is aiming at.
- The accompanimentsVeal is lean and mild, which is why bacon, ham, tongue or pickled pork appear on a separate dish — salt and fat to supply what the meat lacks. The cut lemon serves the same purpose as it does with schnitzel.
- Yield and costA best end of six ribs, roughly 4 lb, serves five or six. The recipe quotes 11d. to 1s. a pound, a nineteenth-century retail price.
For most of the nineteenth century a joint before a clear fire, turned on a spit or a bottle-jack, was the standard English way with a rack of veal — the oven was for baking, and a baked joint was considered second-best. The long list of permitted sauces is the more revealing part of the entry: parsley, onion, white and rice sauces are all flour-thickened and pale, chosen to sit with white meat rather than against it, and the accompanying bacon, ham, tongue or pickled pork reflects the standing English complaint that veal is insipid on its own. Veal itself was a by-product of the dairy, most plentiful in spring when surplus bull calves came to market.