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Veal Ragout
Take a breast of veal. Lay it in a baking kettle and cover with water.
Slice one onion, a little powdered sweet marjoram, salt and pepper, also a little clove. Let this boil slowly until tender, then pour off your liquor; then dredge it with flour and butter, place in the oven and baste with butter and water, sprinkling cracker crumbs over it.-Mrs William Edwards.
A two-stage braise-then-brown: the veal is poached until tender, then finished in the oven under a crust of flour, butter and cracker crumbs. The recipe gives no quantities beyond "a little," so the seasoning is left to judgment.
- Breast of vealA bone-in cut from the underside of the calf, layered with fat and cartilage; whole breasts run anywhere from about 4 to 8 lb, and today it often needs a special order from a butcher. It is a slow-cooking cut; the long simmer here is doing structural work, not just flavoring.
- Baking kettleA heavy lidded pot that could go over the fire and then into the oven or under coals -- what would now be called a Dutch oven. Any oven-safe braiser works, and it saves transferring the meat.
- Simmer time"Until tender" for a breast of veal covered in water means roughly 1.5 to 2 hours at a bare simmer. A hard boil will tighten the meat and cloud the liquor; keep it barely trembling.
- Do not discard the liquorThe instruction to "pour off your liquor" means to drain it from the meat. The recipe says nothing about what becomes of it, but skimmed and reduced it would make a serviceable gravy.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. The finishing stage is browning already-cooked meat, so 400-425F for 20-30 minutes, basting once or twice, gets color on the crumbs without drying the veal.
- Dredge with flour and butterFlour the surface first, then dot or brush with softened butter -- the two together form the crust that the cracker crumbs adhere to. Basting with butter and water keeps that crust from scorching.
- Cracker crumbsCrushed soda crackers or common crackers, coarser and plainer than modern seasoned breadcrumbs. Plain crackers crushed to a rough grind are the nearest match; panko browns similarly but reads differently.
- Clove and marjoram"A little clove" is genuinely vague, and given the "powdered" marjoram alongside it, ground clove may be meant; either a pinch of ground clove or two or three whole cloves in the poaching water is a conservative reading, since clove overwhelms veal quickly. Dried marjoram at about a teaspoon suits this quantity of meat.
- YieldNo quantity is given; a whole breast of veal will serve roughly four to six, allowing for the considerable bone.
Ragout comes from the French ragoût, from ragoûter, to revive the appetite, and by the nineteenth century American cookbooks used it loosely for almost any stewed or braised meat dish rather than the tightly defined French preparation. What is striking here is the second stage: rather than serving the veal in its own sauce, the cook drains it, crusts it with flour, butter and cracker crumbs, and browns it in the oven, giving a plain dish a finished surface. Breast of veal was an economical cut, and recipes like this one, contributed under a subscriber's name in the manner of community cookbooks, reflect the practical kitchen more than any restaurant tradition.