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Veal Soup, with Rice or Forcemeat Balls
The veal is to be blanched in the usual way, but the water in which it has been seethed is not to be thrown away, as it contains some of the strength of the meat; but take out the meat, clean it, and lay it in cold water to become perfectly white. Then through a sieve pass the water used in the boiling, pour it over the veal, and boil the whole together. Having clarified the liquor by skimming, add a piece of butter, some salt, and half a lemon (which tastes excellently with rice); on serving, beat eggs into the liquor, to which add rice mixed with a piece of butter, and with mace grated over it: it makes a very beautiful strong soup. When forcemeat balls are used instead of the rice, they should be boiled in a basin, and added to the soup, along with the meat and vegetable roots; the soup should be beaten up with eggs (one to each quart), and nutmeg should be grated over it as in the other case.
A Victorian white veal soup, written as a method rather than a formula — no quantities, no times. The hinge is the egg liaison at the end: once the eggs go in, the soup must never boil again.
- The egg finishTake the pot off the heat, whisk a ladle of hot broth into the beaten eggs, then stir that back into the soup and hold it below a simmer. Boiling after this point curdles the eggs into threads and ruins the texture the recipe is aiming for.
- Quantities are yours to setThe only ratio given is one egg per quart of liquid. Reckon on 2-3 lb of veal (breast, shank or a knuckle for body) to 3 quarts of water, which yields roughly six to eight servings.
- "Blanched in the usual way"Cover the veal with cold water, bring it slowly to a boil, then lift the meat out and rinse it. The instruction to plunge it into cold water afterwards is purely cosmetic — it firms and whitens the surface, which mattered in an era when a veal soup was judged on its pallor.
- Keep the blanching waterThe recipe insists on saving it, as it holds some of the strength of the meat. Strain it through a sieve lined with a cloth or coffee filter to catch the scum, or you will lose the clarity you just worked for.
- Cooking timeVeal on the bone wants 2 to 3 hours at a bare tremble to draw out the gelatine. A hard boil clouds the broth, which is why the recipe calls for clarifying the liquor by skimming.
- Cook the rice separatelyRice boiled in the soup itself sheds starch and turns the liquid gluey. Boil it apart, dress it with butter, and add it at the table as directed.
- Forcemeat balls "boiled in a basin"This probably means poaching them in a bowl of water or broth rather than dropping them straight into the soup, where they would shed and cloud it. Any veal or chicken forcemeat bound with breadcrumb and egg works; poach until firm, about 8-10 minutes for walnut-sized balls.
- Mace and nutmegMace is the lacy outer covering of the nutmeg seed — milder and more floral than the nut. Grate either at the last moment; pre-ground goes flat within weeks.
- The lemonAdd the half lemon during the simmer for its perfume, but taste before serving.
- "Vegetable roots"Standard nineteenth-century shorthand for carrot, turnip, onion and parsnip, cut in pieces and cooked with the meat.
This belongs to the white soups, a class that dominated genteel English cookery from the eighteenth century onwards and depended on veal for its pale, gelatinous, faintly sweet broth. The finishing liaison of beaten egg he older older technique that cream and flour largely displaced by the twentieth century. Veal was the natural base because a calf's bones give abundant gelatine with almost no colour or assertive flavour, making it the neutral canvas on which Victorian cooks built their lighter dishes. The alternative of rice or forcemeat balls reflects how such a soup was scaled to the occasion.