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Fillet of Veal Roasted
8 lbs. fillet 1 1/2 cups ham forcemeat 1/2 lb. salt pork 4 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons Gold Medal flour 1/2 teaspoon pepper 2 tablespoons salt 1/2 lemon Remove the bone from the meat, trim and wipe, and stuff hole from which the bone was taken with the forcemeat. Skewer and tie the fillet into a round shape. Rub the salt and pepper into the veal, cut the pork into thin slices and put them under and over the fillet. Have oven hot enough at first to brown surfaces; baste with water when brown and frequently thereafter until roast is done, keeping the bottom of pan covered with water. Roast for three hours. Reduce oven heat after the first basting. Remove the pork after the first two hours of cooking. Spread the top of fillet with butter and dredge with Gold Medal flour. Repeat this in thirty minutes. The surface should be a rich brown. Remove roast to a hot platter.
GRAVY: Brown 2 tablespoons of butter with 3 of Gold Medal flour. Add 1 cup of water or stock and cook until smooth. Drain fat from roasting pan, add 1 cup of water and boil. Add to this the thickening mixture, more seasonings, if needed, and the juice of half a lemon. Strain and pour around the fillet. Garnish with slices of lemon.
A large stuffed veal roast written for a coal or early gas range, where oven control meant opening a damper rather than turning a dial. The instructions are sound; the timing assumes a doneness standard no one uses now.
- What cut to buy"Fillet of veal" here is not tenderloin but the boned round from the leg, the same cut a butcher will sell as a veal leg roast or top round roast. An 8 lb bone-in piece is a special order; ask for it boned and tied, with the bone pocket left open for stuffing.
- Oven temperaturesThe book gives no figures. "Hot enough at first to brown" corresponds to roughly a 450F oven for the first 20 to 30 minutes; "reduce oven heat after the first basting" would be somewhere around 325F for the remainder. These are equivalents, not the book's own numbers.
- Cook to temperature, not three hoursThree hours at these temperatures will take a leg roast well past dry. Use a thermometer in the thickest part of the meat, away from the stuffing, and judge by that; veal roasts are usually taken between 145F and 160F depending on how firm you want the slices. Check the ham forcemeat separately, since a stuffing in the centre of a large roast lags well behind the meat around it.
- Ham forcemeatA forcemeat is ground meat bound with fat, breadcrumbs or egg and seasoned; the ham version here would be lean ham worked with butter or suet, crumbs, and pepper. A cup and a half is enough for the bone cavity only, not a full cavity stuffing.
- The salt pork is barding, not seasoningSliced salt pork laid under and over the fillet compensates for veal's lack of fat, basting it as it renders. Removing it after two hours lets the surface brown. Blanched fatback or thin-sliced unsmoked bacon does the same job; smoked bacon will change the flavour of the finished gravy.
- Two tablespoons of saltThat is a working figure for eight pounds of meat rubbed on the surface, and it is on the high side once salt pork and ham forcemeat are added. Cut it back and adjust the gravy at the end.
- Basting with waterKeeping the pan bottom wet is a deliberate device: it prevents the drippings from scorching over a long roast and gives you a clean base for the gravy. Top the pan up as it evaporates rather than letting it dry.
- The butter-and-flour dredgeSpreading soft butter over the top and dusting it with flour, twice, builds the "rich brown" crust the recipe wants. Do it in the last hour, and use a fine dusting; a heavy one turns pasty.
- YieldAn 8 lb roast serves twelve to sixteen, which tells you the sort of table this book had in mind.
Gold Medal Flour cookbooks were promotional publications from the Washburn-Crosby Company of Minneapolis, the milling firm that later became General Mills, and their purpose was to put the brand name into as many recipes as possible -- note that flour appears twice here, in the dredge and the gravy, in a dish that is essentially a plain roast. Veal held a larger place on American tables in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than it does now, and a boned, stuffed, tied leg was a standard company roast, generous enough for a Sunday table of a dozen.