Veal Potpie
Take 2 or 3 pounds of veal, the knuckle or any pieces that are not too thin or stringy. Trim off the skin, take out the small bones, and cut the meat into convenient and attractive pieces for serving. Pack closely in a stewing-pan and cover with boiling water. As soon as it boils skim, add 2 teaspoonfuls of salt, a saltspoon of pepper, 1 small onion, sliced, and let it simmer two hours.
Have 6 medium-sized potatoes pared and soaking in cold water. Put them in with the meat and boil until nearly done. While the potatoes are cooking, make a short biscuit dough; have the stew boiling rapidly and drop the dough in spoonfuls on the top--the liquor should be cooked away so that the crust will not sink into it, but rest on the top of the meat and potatoes, and cook by the steam. Cover closely at once, and cook rapidly fifteen minutes without raising the cover. Another five minutes' cooking should not harm the dumplings, if kept covered and boiling. Take up the dumplings and put in the warm oven at once, taking care that the cool air does not strike them suddenly. Add to the pie 2 teaspoonfuls of Worcestershire sauce and half a teaspoonful of kitchen bouquet, stir just enough to blend, turn into a deep serving-dish with the dumplings laid carefully on the top. A cup of stewed and seasoned tomato, added just before the dumplings are put in, is a good addition.
If there is too much of the gravy to pour over the meat and potato, serve the remainder in a gravy-dish.
Double the amount of dough needed for the pie made, and have the remainder rolled out at once and made into biscuit that can be baked for a dessert to be eaten with fruit.
A stewed veal dish finished with steamed biscuit dumplings rather than a baked crust. The whole thing hinges on liquid level and an unlifted lid.
- The hinge: reduce before the dough goes inThe dumplings must sit on the meat and potatoes and cook in steam, not float in broth. Boil the liquor down until it is just below the level of the solids, then drop the dough and cover immediately.
- Fifteen minutes, lid onLifting the cover drops the steam and the dumplings collapse. Set a timer and leave it alone; the instruction to keep it at a rapid boil throughout is what generates the steam.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. Two teaspoons of salt for 2-3 lb of meat plus potatoes is reasonable, but taste the broth before the dumplings go on, since it will not be adjustable afterward.
- Veal knuckleThe cut is chosen for gelatin, which is what gives the gravy body. A butcher will still cut veal shank or shoulder; if veal is unavailable, bone-in lamb shoulder behaves similarly, though the flavor is stronger.
- Two hours of simmeringKeep it at a bare tremble rather than a boil for that stage; hard boiling toughens the muscle fiber even as the connective tissue breaks down. The rapid boil is only wanted at the dumpling stage.
- Short biscuit doughA standard baking-powder biscuit dough, soft enough to drop from a spoon. Mix it while the potatoes cook and do not let it stand long, or the leavening is spent before it hits the steam.
- Kitchen bouquetA caramel-and-vegetable browning sauce, still sold under that name. It is for color and a little depth; half a teaspoon is enough to darken the gravy without tasting of it. Gravy browning or a dash of soy will do the same job.
- Warm oven for the dumplingsThe recipe gives no temperature; the lowest setting on a modern oven will do. The point is only to hold them warm without a sudden draft of cool air, not to cook them further.
- YieldNo yield is given; 2 to 3 lb of veal with six potatoes and dumplings would plausibly serve four to six. The closing suggestion is to make a double batch of biscuit dough and bake the surplus separately to eat with fruit.
The potpie of nineteenth-century American cookery is not always a pie in the modern sense: as here, it is often a stew capped with dumplings or with rolled dough squares dropped into the pot, cooked entirely on the range. Veal knuckle and shank were cheap, gelatinous cuts that rewarded long simmering and gave a gravy that set to jelly when cold. Worcestershire sauce and Kitchen Bouquet were both commercial bottled products used to add color and savor to pale stews.