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Veal, with Cucumbers
Roast a neck or a loin of veal, or any veal that is left. The leg part is tough and dry, as everyone must know. When cold, cut it into scallops, and put it into the sauce blanquette. Take six fine cucumbers, cut three of them into quarters, pare them about the size of the scallops; then take and mince the parings and some other pieces with a little onion to make a puree. Fry the onions and the trimmings of the cucumbers together in a little butter; when the cucumbers are quite tender, moisten with sauce tournee, and stew them on the corner of the stove for an hour; skim off the grease, and rub this sauce through a tamis. Put the other whole cucumbers into some sauce tournee, and let them boil till done. Before putting the cucumbers in the sauce, they must be marinaded in a basin with a little salt and a thimbleful of white vinegar; let them remain for half an hour, and then drain them in a clean towel, and put them in the sauce, if you have any; otherwise, put them in a stewpan with a small bit of butter, a bundle of parsley, and a few green onions; fry them gently, then dredge them with about a spoonful of fine white flour, and moisten with good broth; let that boil for an hour in the corner of the stove, skim all the butter, drain the cucumbers in a hair sieve, and reduce the sauce till it is fit to receive the thickening. When you have no sauce in your larder, make some according to the recipes given for Blanche Sauce or Brown Sauce.
A classic French treatment of cold roast veal, written for a kitchen that already had stockpots and mother sauces standing by. The two things to get right are the sauces and the fact that the veal is only reheated, never cooked again.
- The hinge: never boil the vealThe scallops go into the finished blanquette cold, and the recipe says nothing about cooking them further. Veal simmered a second time turns grey and stringy, so warm the scallops through gently in the sauce rather than letting it boil.
- Sauce tournée and blanquetteSauce tournée is a pale velouté: a blond roux moistened with veal or chicken stock, cooked out and strained. Blanquette here means that velouté finished with egg yolks and cream and sharpened with lemon. Any well-made velouté will stand in for both.
- "Scallops"Escalopes, not shellfish. Cut the cold roast across the grain into slices about a quarter-inch thick and a couple of inches across, so the quartered cucumber pieces can be pared to match.
- "The corner of the stove"The cool end of a coal range, used for long, barely-moving simmers. On a modern hob this is the lowest setting with the pan pulled half off the burner, or a 275-300F oven. The hour of stewing is real cooking time, not a typo.
- Tamis and hair sieveA tamis is a drum sieve; the purée was forced through it with a wooden pestle. A fine-mesh conical sieve or a food mill does the same job, and a blender followed by a sieve is faster still. A hair sieve is simply a fine strainer for draining.
- The cucumbersLarge frame-grown cucumbers of the period were thick-skinned and coarse-seeded, which may be why they are pared before use; note that the recipe puts the parings to work in the puree rather than throwing them away, and says nothing about the seeds. Two or three large field cucumbers or six small ones will do.
- The salt-and-vinegar marinadeHalf an hour in salt with the thimbleful of white vinegar the recipe specifies draws out water so the pieces hold their shape and do not thin the sauce. Drain them in a clean towel, as instructed.
- Roasting the vealIf starting from raw, a neck or loin roasts at 350F to an internal 145F, then rests and cools completely before slicing. The recipe assumes leftovers, and the dish is better with meat that has firmed up overnight.
- YieldNot stated in the original. A loin or neck of veal with six cucumbers and enough velouty to coat would serve roughly six to eight as a main course, with rice or plain boiled potatoes.
This is a familiar nineteenth-century pattern: a cold roast reappearing under a white sauce, with a vegetable given twice over, once as a pur he voc.