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Some Carrots, Turnips, Onion and Celery
A bunch of Herbs.
Cut the veal into neat plump fillets, and lard each; put them in a stewpan with a layer of carrots, turnips, onion, celery and herbs (mirepoix) at the bottom, placing the grenadines on the vegetables; cover them over with a buttered paper. Braise them thus for about twenty-five minutes, basting while cooking. When cooked, take out the grenadines and glaze them. Strain the stock, and reduce it well. Dish up the grenadines in a circle on mashed potato, pour the essence over, and serve some nicely-cooked vegetables, macédoine, peas, etc., in the centre.
Grilled Steak à la Maître d'Hôtel.
Ingredients.
Half a pound of Rump Steak.
Half an ounce of Butter.
One teaspoonful of Lemon-juice.
One dessertspoonful of chopped Parsley.
This is a page of grenadins de veau — small larded veal fillets braised on a bed of root vegetables — set down in the shorthand of a professional kitchen. Note that the text runs on: the list beginning "Half a pound of Rump Steak" belongs to the next recipe, Grilled Steak à la Maître d'Hôtel, not to this one.
- What a grenadine isA grenadin (here anglicised) is a thick, neatly trimmed medallion cut from the veal cushion or loin, roughly 1 to 1½ inches deep and trimmed to an even round or oval. Butchers rarely use the word now; ask for veal loin or top round cut into thick, uniform medallions.
- LardingLarding means threading strips of firm pork back fat through the meat with a larding needle, which lean veal genuinely needs. If neither needle nor back fat is available, bard instead: wrap each fillet in a thin sheet of fat or a rasher of unsmoked streaky bacon and tie it.
- The mirepoix is the pointThe vegetables are not a side dish. Cut carrot, turnip, onion and celery small and even and set the meat on top so it steams and braises rather than boils. Their sugars are what give the finished essence its depth. The recipe itself gives no instruction to cook the vegetables before the meat goes on.
- Buttered paperA round of buttered parchment laid directly on the meat — a cartouche — keeps the surface moist while allowing some reduction. Foil or a lid traps too much steam and you lose the concentrated stock the recipe depends on.
- Liquid and heatThe recipe does not specify a liquid, but the instruction to strain and reduce the stock implies a little is added, enough to come part-way up the vegetables; braise gently and covered. Twenty-five minutes suits fillets of this thickness; take them to about 145F internal and no further, since veal loin dries fast.
- Bunch of herbsA bouquet garni of parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf, tied so it can be lifted out.
- GlazingReduce the strained stock to a syrupy essence, then brush it repeatedly over the fillets in a hot oven or under a low grill until they shine. This is the finishing step that distinguishes the dish; a thin, unreduced sauce will simply slide off.
- MacédoineA macédoine is a mixture of vegetables cut in small even dice — carrot, turnip, French beans, peas — cooked separately and buttered. It is served in the well of the potato ring, not stirred through the braising vegetables.
Grenadins belong to the classical French repertoire that British professional cookery absorbed wholesale in the second half of the nineteenth century, and books of "high-class" recipes like this one were written for cooks in large private households and for the cookery-school students who would staff them. The construction is textbook: a mirepoix beneath, a cartouche above, the braising liquid strained and reduced to an essence and used to glaze the meat, and the whole dressed in a circle on a potato border with a garnish in the centre — a plating convention that survived into hotel dining rooms well past 1900. The word mirepoix is traditionally traced to the eighteenth-century household of the Duc de Lévis-Mirepoix, though the attribution rests on kitchen lore rather than documents. Veal's leanness explains the larding: without inserted pork fat, a loin medallion braised for twenty-five minutes would be dry, and the whole technique exists to solve that problem.