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Veal, Shoulder of, Boiled
Cut off the knuckle, and draw out the bones. Rub the underpart with a cut lemon, and sprinkle over it pepper, salt, and chopped parsley. Roll the meat, and skewer it neatly. Put it into a stewpan, cover with milk and water, and let it simmer gently till done enough. Carefully remove the scum as it rises, or the appearance of the dish will be spoilt. Send good onion sauce to table with it, and serve boiled bacon or pickled pork on a separate dish. This dish is by most people considered insipid. Time, twenty minutes to the pound. Probable cost, 8 1/2d. per pound, if bought whole.
A Victorian boiling joint: shoulder of veal boned, rolled and poached in milk and water, then sliced and served with onion sauce. The book's own verdict — "insipid" — is a fair warning, and most of the work of making it good happens in the seasoning and the sauce.
- The hinge: never let it boilMilk-and-water at a true boil will curdle, throw heavy scum and squeeze the veal tight and dry. Bring it up slowly and hold it at the barest tremble, around 180F, with the surface only shivering. This is what the instruction about scum is really guarding against.
- Buy it boned and rolledAsk the butcher for a boned and rolled shoulder of veal, roughly 4 to 5 lb, and have the knuckle removed. Season the inside face as directed before it is rolled — lemon, pepper, salt, parsley — because nothing you do to the outside will penetrate a rolled joint poached in liquid.
- Keep the bones and knuckleVeal bones are the best gelatine in the kitchen. Simmer them separately for stock, or add them alongside the joint, and use the poaching liquid as the base for the onion sauce rather than fresh milk.
- Timing and temperatureTwenty minutes to the pound gives about 100 minutes for a 5 lb joint, which is in the right range but should not be trusted blind. Take it to 150F at the centre on a thermometer and let it rest 20 minutes in the covered pan off the heat; carry-over will bring it up and the joint slices far more cleanly warm than hot.
- Salt the liquidThe original salts only the interior surface. A poaching bath of milk and water salted to roughly 1 teaspoon per quart, with a bay leaf, a few peppercorns, an onion and a piece of celery, is the difference between a bland joint and a good one.
- Onion sauceThe Victorian onion sauce is a white sauce — butter, flour and milk — enriched with onions boiled soft and either chopped fine or sieved. Using the veal poaching liquid in place of some of the milk, and finishing with a little cream and a grating of nutmeg, brings it close to a soubise and does most of the work of making the dish worth eating.
- The bacon on the sideBoiled bacon or pickled pork is not garnish but seasoning: salt and fat against very lean, very mild meat. A piece of unsmoked gammon or a slab of good bacon, simmered separately and sliced, serves the same purpose. Do not cook it in with the veal or the poaching liquid turns too salty for the sauce.
- Cost and yield8½d. per pound, "if bought whole," is a later nineteenth-century price and suggests veal was moderately priced rather than a luxury cut. A 4 to 5 lb rolled shoulder serves eight to ten as a main course, and the cold remains slice well for the next day.
Boiling — properly, poaching — was a standard English treatment for pale meats through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the milk-and-water bath here works much like a thrifty domestic version of the French blanc, a floured, acidulated liquid used to keep veal, sweetbreads and brains from darkening. Appearance mattered a great deal: veal was prized for its whiteness, hence the insistence that scum be lifted off before it can settle back onto the joint and mar it. What is striking is that Cassell's, a comprehensive household dictionary rather than a work of advocacy, includes the dish and then flatly concedes that most people find it insipid — the entry looks to be there for completeness, since a shoulder of veal was a cut a cook might have to deal with, rather than as a recommendation. The accompaniments point the same way: onion sauce for sweetness and body, pickled pork or bacon for salt and fat, both supplying what the very lean, mild meat cannot. By the mid-twentieth century roasting and braising had largely displaced boiling for such joints in British kitchens, and veal itself became a much less common sight on the domestic table.