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VEAL TENDONS, FRIED (a la Villeroi)
Stew the tendons in the usual way, and when they are tender put them between two dishes till cold. Cut them into neat slices half an inch thick and about an inch and a half square, and place them in a marinade of equal parts of oil and vinegar, with a sliced onion and a strip of lemon-rind put under them, and a little pepper and salt sprinkled over them. Let them remain in this for three hours. Drain and dry them. dip them in frying batter, and fry till they are brown. Serve in a circle, with tomato sauce in the centre of the dish. Time, four hours to simmer the tendons.
A late-Victorian way with an offcut most butchers now discard. Nothing here is difficult, but the recipe assumes you already know two things it does not explain: what a veal tendon is, and what "stew in the usual way" means.
- What the tendons areThese are the cartilaginous strips from the breast and knuckle of veal — tendrons in French butchery — not sinew in the tough sense but soft gristle that turns translucent and gelatinous with long simmering. You will have to order them; ask for veal breast tendons or the cartilage trimmed from a breast, and reckon on about 1 lb for four people as a first course.
- "Stew in the usual way"The recipe gives no method; it almost certainly points to a plain simmer in light stock. Cover with veal or chicken stock, add an onion stuck with a clove, a carrot, a bouquet garni and a little salt, and hold at the barest tremble for the stated four hours. A rolling boil clouds the liquid and shreds the tendons; they should be soft enough to yield to a fingernail but still hold a slice.
- Pressing between two dishesThis is not decorative. Weighting the tendons flat as they cool compacts the gelatine so they set into a firm slab you can cut cleanly. A plate with a tin of tomatoes on top, overnight in the fridge, does the job better than the Victorian larder did.
- The marinadeEqual parts oil and vinegar is sharper than a modern vinaigrette and is meant to cut the richness of the gelatine. Three hours is ample; much longer and the acid begins to soften the set you just worked to achieve. Wine vinegar rather than malt.
- Drying before the batterThe hinge of the dish. Oil-soaked, damp slices will shed their coating in the fat. Blot them hard on kitchen paper, then dust lightly with flour before dipping so the batter has something to grip.
- Frying temperatureThe original assumes a deep pan of fat judged by eye. Use 350–375°F (175–190°C) and fry in small batches; the tendons are already cooked through, so you are only setting and colouring the batter, three to four minutes.
- Tomato sauceA period tomato sauce for this purpose is a smooth, sieved, stock-based sauce rather than a chunky pasta sauce — thin enough to pool in the centre of the ring of fritters. Season it sharply; the batter and gelatine are both bland.
- YieldServes four as an entrée in the old sense, meaning a small hot course between fish and roast, or two as a modern main with something green and acidic alongside.
À la Villeroi is generally traced to the Villeroy family of French marshals and courtiers, and in classical kitchen usage it denotes a cooked morsel masked in a thick, cooled velouté-based sauce, then crumbed and deep-fried — the sauce sets to a coating and melts back inside the crust. The book has taken a liberty here, substituting a straightforward marinade and frying batter. The dish also shows the Victorian kitchen's refusal to waste: veal tendons were a by-product of butchering breast and knuckle, worthless raw, and only edible after hours of gentle simmering converted the collagen to gelatine. That same gelatine is the point — it is what gives the cooled slices their firm, faintly springy bite under the batter. Recipes of this kind faded with the decline of long-braised offcuts and of veal itself in the Anglophone kitchen, though tendrons de veau remain on French butchers' counters.