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Veal Pottage
Cut away from a knuckle of veal all the meat that can be stewed or made useful in any way, then break the bone into four or five pieces, and put these into a stewpan with an onion stuck with two cloves, a small blade of mace, a bunch of parsley, a sprig of thyme, a bay-leaf, six or eight peppercorns, and a little bacon-rind. Pour over these ingredients five pints of cold water. Bring the liquor to the boil, skim carefully, draw the saucepan to the side, and let its contents simmer gently. When sufficiently boiled strain the soup into a pan, and let it stand till the next day. Remove the fat from the top, take up the jelly free from sediment, and boil vegetables, such as celery, artichokes, or turnips, in it till tender. Rub the vegetables through a hair sieve, and mix the pulp with the liquor. Stir into it half a table-spoonful of flour which has been mixed to a smooth paste with half a pint of cream or milk. Let the soup boil a few minutes; add pepper and salt to taste, and serve. Time, five hours to boil the stock.
A two-day soup in the old style: a clear jellied veal stock made one day, turned into a vegetable purée soup the next. Almost all the work is in the stock, and the finish takes ten minutes.
- The hinge: chill overnightThe recipe is built on the stock setting to a jelly so the fat lifts off in a cake and the sediment stays behind in the pan. Do not skip the overnight rest and do not stir the jelly when you lift it out; ladle from the clear top and discard the murky bottom half-inch.
- Knuckle of vealA veal shank or hock, bone and all. Ask a butcher for a sawn veal shank, about 2-3 lb; the gelatine from the bone and joint is the whole point, so beef marrow bones are a poor substitute unless you add a split calf's foot or extra knuckle.
- Five pintsImperial measure, so about 2.8 litres or 12 US cups. Five hours of gentle simmering will reduce this appreciably, by how much depends on the pan and the heat; the recipe states no finished quantity.
- Simmer, never boil"Draw the saucepan to the side" means keep it at a bare tremble on the edge of the heat. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and clouds the stock, and a cloudy stock will not give the clean jelly the recipe depends on.
- Blade of maceA piece of the dried outer casing of nutmeg, sold whole in some spice shops. A generous pinch of ground mace, or a scant one of grated nutmeg, stands in.
- ArtichokesIn a book of this date this generally means Jerusalem artichokes, which cook to a smooth sweet pulp, rather than globe artichokes. Celery, turnip, or Jerusalem artichoke each want about 1 lb, peeled and cut small, simmered in the stock until collapsing.
- Hair sieveA fine drum sieve of woven horsehair. A food mill or a blender followed by a pass through a fine mesh sieve gives the same texture; blending alone leaves celery fibres behind.
- The thickeningHalf a tablespoon of flour to half an Imperial pint (10 fl oz) of cream or milk is a very light bind, barely more than a gloss. Whisk it smooth, pour it in off the boil, then bring the soup back for two or three minutes to cook out the flour.
- YieldAbout six modest first-course servings. Season only at the end, after the reduction and the cream, or it will finish over-salted.
Pottage is the older English word for anything boiled in a pot, and by the late nineteenth century it survived mainly as a slightly old-fashioned label for a thick, pur onstrates two lessons at once: that a bone the household might otherwise throw out yields a stock stiff enough to set, and that a soup can be thickened with vegetable pulp rather than a heavy roux. Veal knuckle was the standard source of gelatine in Victorian and Edwardian kitchens, used for aspics, glazes and clear soups alike. The instruction to save every scrap of meat for other dishes before breaking up the bone is characteristic of the book's economy, as is the bacon-rind dropped in for savour.