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Veal Roulade
Bone a breast of veal without cutting the upper meat; beat it well with a rolling-pin, then mix the following ingredients. Half a pound each of lean ham and bacon passed through a mincing machine, a chopped shallot, a table-spoonful of chopped parsley, the same of capers, a pinch each of winter savory, grated lemon-peel, and nutmeg, a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of pepper, the same of thyme, a quarter of a pound of bread-crumbs, a pickled gherkin in strips, and the beaten yolks of three eggs. Spread this forcemeat over the veal, and roll the breast up sausage-shape, tie it with tape, and brush it over with clarified butter; then lay it in a stewpan with hot butter until it is delicately browned. Pour in a gill each of veal stock and milk, cover with buttered paper, and cook gently for about three hours. Leave until cold, unbind, glaze, and serve in slices as a breakfast dish.
A cold rolled and stuffed breast of veal, closer to a galantine than to a roast. Nothing here is difficult, but the recipe assumes a butcher, a stewpan and a Victorian breakfast table.
- The hinge: cook it gently and cool it wholeThe roll is meant to be sliced cold, and it only slices cleanly if the forcemeat sets inside a moist, slowly cooked joint. A bare simmer for the full three hours, then cooling in one piece under light weight, gives firm rounds; a hard boil squeezes the juices out and leaves the stuffing crumbly.
- A gillIn this British book a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz, so about two-thirds of a US cup. A US gill is half a cup. Either way the total liquid is small — this is a braise in its own steam, not a stew, which is why the buttered paper matters.
- Buttered paper and the modern equivalentA round of parchment cut to the pan, buttered side down on the meat, plus a tight lid. Alternatively set the covered pan in a 300F oven, which holds a steadier temperature than a burner over three hours.
- Boning the breastAsk the butcher for a breast of veal boned in one sheet with the meat left unsplit; it is an awkward job with a short knife at home. A boned breast will typically run somewhere around 3 to 4 lb, which suits this quantity of forcemeat. A boned, butterflied pork shoulder takes the same treatment if veal is unavailable, provided the sheet of meat is large enough to roll around the stuffing.
- SaltHalf a pound each of ham and bacon, plus capers and a gherkin, carry a great deal of salt already. Cure strengths are not what they were when this was written — taste a pinch of the forcemeat, fried, before adding the full teaspoon.
- Winter savoryStill grown but seldom sold fresh; dried savory works, and dried thyme with a little sage is a common stand-in, though the forcemeat already carries thyme of its own. Use about half the quantity if the herbs are dried and old.
- Tape, and tyingThe tape called for is flat cotton tape, which spreads the pressure instead of cutting into the meat. Cotton butcher's twine at 1-inch intervals does the same job; wrapping the roll in a double layer of muslin before tying helps keep it cylindrical.
- GlazingThe glaze is meat glaze — veal stock reduced until it coats a spoon and sets tacky — brushed over the cold roll. The pan liquid can be strained, defatted and reduced, but note it contains a gill of milk, which will not reduce cleanly; a separately reduced veal stock is the safer source.
- YieldA roll of this size gives 10 to 12 servings in thin slices. Keep it refrigerated and cut it cold; it holds three or four days wrapped.
The roulade belongs to the family of cold rolled meats — galantine, ballotine, the German Rollbraten — in which a boned joint is spread with forcemeat, tied into a cylinder, cooked slowly and then sliced cold for the sideboard. Breast of veal was one common carrier — the classic galantine is boned poultry — because it is thin, gelatinous and cheap, and because the gelatin sets the slices firm as they cool. The instruction to serve it "as a breakfast dish" places it: in many late-Victorian households breakfast could mean a cold buffet of hams, tongues, pressed and glazed meats standing on the sideboard from which the family helped themselves over an hour or two, and dishes like this were made a day or two ahead for exactly that duty. Cassell's, an encyclopaedic compilation aimed at ambitious middle-class kitchens, gives a number of such made-ahead cold joints; they are the practical answer to feeding an irregular household without a cook standing over a range at eight in the morning.