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Veal, Norman Haricot Of
Take two pounds and a half of veal chops. Trim them neatly, free them almost entirely from fat, and brown them lightly in a little butter. Put them into a stewpan, pour over them a pint of boiling stock, add a bunch of parsley, and simmer very gently for three-quarters of an hour. Clean two pounds of new potatoes. Let them boil up once, then put them in the stewpan above the meat, cover closely, and simmer again until they are done enough. Before serving add salt and pepper if required. Place the cutlets in the centre of a hot dish, and put the potatoes round them with any other vegetables that may have been cooked for the purpose. Young carrots, green peas, or cauliflowers are all good. A slice of lean ham is a great improvement to this dish. Time, an hour and a quarter. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A one-pot braise of veal chops finished with new potatoes cooked in the same pan. The instructions are sound; only the units and a few assumptions need translating.
- The pint is imperialA British pint of stock is 20 fl oz, so use 2.5 US cups. It should barely cover the chops in a snug pan; if your stewpan is wide, add a little more so the meat is not left dry.
- Which veal chopsShoulder or rib chops about an inch thick suit this best, since they can take three-quarters of an hour of simmering without falling apart. Thin scallopine-cut chops will be dry long before the potatoes go in.
- "Let them boil up once"This means bringing the cleaned potatoes to a boil in water and immediately draining them, a brief parboil that removes surface starch and gives them a head start. Small new potatoes then need 20-25 minutes resting on top of the meat.
- Brown, do not fry throughThe initial colouring in butter is for flavour only. Get the pan hot enough to take colour in three or four minutes a side, and pour off any butter that has darkened before the stock goes in, or the sauce will taste scorched.
- A bunch of parsleyTen or twelve stalks tied with string, stems included, lifted out before serving. The stems carry more flavour than the leaves and will not shred into the sauce.
- Keep it below a simmer"Simmer very gently" is the hinge of the dish. At a rolling boil the veal tightens and the small amount of liquid reduces to nothing; you want a bare tremble, lid on, on the lowest workable heat.
- The slice of hamA thick piece of unsmoked lean ham or gammon laid in with the veal, chopped and scattered over at the end. It supplies salt and depth that lean veal and plain stock lack, though the recipe treats it as an optional improvement, and the salt is in any case added only at the finish.
- Yield and costFour to five as written, with the suggested carrots, peas or cauliflower cooked separately and arranged around the meat. The "3s." is three shillings in pre-decimal British money.
A haricot in nineteenth-century English cookery books usually has nothing to do with beans: the word is generally traced to the old French harigoter, to cut up in pieces, and it came to mean a stew of cut meat with vegetables, most familiarly haricot of mutton. "Norman" here appears to signal the Normandy manner, which is associated with dairy and garden produce rather than wine: butter for the browning, new potatoes and young vegetables cooked in the same pan. The entry belongs with the plainer braises, a single stewpan producing meat, potatoes and sauce together, with the price printed so a household could reckon the cost before committing to it.