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VEAL TENDONS (a la Provencale)
Take the tendons of a breast of veal, and cut them into pieces two inches square. Lay these in a good-sized saucepan, and pour over them four ounces of salad oil, and add two moderate-sized onions finely minced, a clove of garlic, a bay-leaf, a sprig of thyme, and a little pepper and salt. Put the pan on a slow fire, and place lighted embers on the lid that the cooking process may be carried on above as well as below. Stir the preparation frequently, and let it simmer gently till the gristles are tender. Pour in half a pint of stock boil for five minutes, and without skimming the fat from the gravy. Serve the tendons in a dish with the gravy poured over them.
A braise of the cartilage from a veal breast, cooked in oil and aromatics before stock is added at the very end. The instructions assume a butcher who breaks down whole breasts and a hearth cook who can bank coals on a lid; both need translating.
- What the tendons areThese are the soft cartilaginous rib tips and the gristly strips at the thin end of a breast of veal, not sinew from the leg. Ask a butcher for veal breast rib tips, or buy a whole bone-in breast and cut them away yourself; they are rarely sold separately now.
- Salad oil"Salad oil" in nineteenth-century English cookery usually meant olive oil, and four ounces read as fluid ounces is about half a cup. It is the cooking medium, not a dressing, so a plain mild olive oil is right rather than a peppery finishing one.
- Embers on the lidThis is hearth technique for heating the pot from above as well as below, as the recipe says. A heavy lidded casserole in a low oven, around 300F, is a reasonable modern stand-in, and you need not stir as often once it is there.
- Time to tender"Till the gristles are tender" is the only guide given, and in practice that is likely to be two to three hours. Cartilage has to convert to gelatin; undercooked it is rubbery and squeaky, and no amount of extra stock will fix it.
- The stockHalf a pint in an English kitchen of this period is ten fluid ounces, so about a cup and a quarter. It goes in at the end to loosen the oil and browned residue into a gravy, not to braise the meat.
- Do not skimThe instruction is deliberate. The oil and the gelatin released from the tendons emulsify into a glossy sauce when the stock boils for those five minutes; skimming the fat leaves a thin, separated gravy.
- Garlic and ProvenceOne clove for the whole dish is a light hand by current standards. Leave it whole and fish it out, or crush it if you want the flavour forward.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; the tendons from one breast will probably serve two to three as a first course. They are sticky and rich, so serve them hot with bread or plain rice and something sharp alongside.
Veal tendons were a standard entrée in nineteenth-century professional cookery precisely because they were a by-product: once the breast had been boned for a fricandeau or a stuffed roast, the rib tips and gristle remained. Carême and the chefs who followed him treated tendons de veau as a dish in its own right, commonly braised long and then glazed, crumbed and grilled, or masked with a sauce. The à la provençale label here signals the olive oil, garlic and thyme rather than any specific regional dish. Coals banked on the lid is the older hearth way of holding a pot at a steady low heat, though it was still ordinary braising practice in professional kitchens of this period, whose braising pans had lids sunk to hold embers. Cuts like this largely vanished from English-language cookbooks in the twentieth century as butchery moved off the premises, though gelatinous cartilage remains prized in a number of other cuisines.