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VEAL SOUP (a plain family dish)
Take about four pounds of the knuckle of veal, and cut it into five or six pieces, sawing through the bones neatly. Put these in a stewpan, pour over them as much cold water as will freely cover them, and let the liquor boil. Skim carefully, draw it to the side, and let it simmer for an hour. Throw into it five or six turnips, two onions, and a few outer sticks of celery, and let it simmer gently for another hour. Mix a table-spoonful of flour or ground rice to a smooth paste with cold water, stir a little of the boiling liquor into it, and add this to the rest. Let it boil a short time longer. Half an hour before the soup is to be served throw into it a pinch of powdered mushrooms, and six or eight sliced potatoes; ten or fifteen minutes before it is served put in half a dozen small dumplings. Add pepper and salt to taste. Serve the veal on a dish with the dumplings and vegetables round it, and send the soup to table in a tureen. If liked, a little sugar browning may be added to the soup to colour it. Time, three hours to simmer the soup. Probable cost, 2s. 8d. Sufficient for seven or eight persons.
A two-in-one dinner: the broth goes to table in a tureen, the meat and vegetables come out as a separate dish. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the ingredients and the serving plan need translating.
- The cut"Knuckle of veal" is the shank, the lower part of the fore or hind leg, full of gelatine. Ask the butcher to saw it into five or six pieces rather than attempting it at home; the cut bone and connective tissue are what give the broth body.
- Heat control is the whole recipeBring to a boil once, skim the grey scum thoroughly, then "draw it to the side" — that is, hold it at a bare tremble, around 180-190F, for the rest of the cooking. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat and turns a clear veal broth cloudy and greasy, and it will toughen the meat.
- Water quantity"As much cold water as will freely cover them" is roughly 3-4 quarts for 4 lb of shank. Start cold so the proteins rise as scum instead of setting in the meat.
- Ground riceA coarsely milled rice meal; rice flour is the nearest thing on shelves today. Used interchangeably here with wheat flour as a thickener. Tempering it with hot liquor before it goes into the pot, as directed, prevents lumps.
- Powdered mushroomsDried mushrooms ground to a powder, a savoury seasoning kept in a jar. Dried porcini or shiitake buzzed in a spice grinder does the same job; the original says only "a pinch", and a teaspoon is a generous modern enlargement of that for this volume.
- Sugar browningCaramel made by cooking sugar until nearly black and letting it down with water, used purely as colouring. Gravy browning off the shelf is the direct descendant. Optional, and it adds a faint bitterness.
- The dumplingsNo recipe is given here; Cassell's gives dumpling recipes elsewhere in the book, and a plain suet or flour dumpling is the likely intention. Roll them small, about 2 tablespoons of dough each; ten to fifteen minutes of poaching in the soup suits that size, and larger ones will be raw in the middle.
- PotatoesHalf an hour of simmering will cook sliced potatoes through and start them dissolving, which is partly the point since they help thicken. If you want them intact on the serving dish, cut them thick and give them twenty minutes.
- Yield and serviceSeven or eight, as stated, on the understanding that the pot yields two dishes: the broth in a tureen, and the veal, dumplings and vegetables arranged on a platter. The 2s. 8d. cost is a snapshot of Victorian prices, not a guide to anything now.
The knuckle was among the least fashionable cuts of veal in Victorian Britain, prized less for its flesh than for the gelatine it gave up to a pot of water. Cassell's files this under plain family cookery and prices it out to the penny, as it did every recipe in the book. The structure of the dish, one boiling producing both a soup and a boiled-meat course, is the standard economical logic of the period's kitchen, the same thinking behind the French pot-au-feu. The powdered mushroom and the sugar browning are both worth noticing as period habits: before commercial stock cubes and bottled sauces were universal, cooks kept homemade flavour and colour concentrates on the shelf to give a pale, mild broth some depth and a more appetising colour.