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Chapter XLIV
1 cupful stale bread, 3 tablespoonfuls butter, 2 tablespoonfuls minced onion, teaspoonful salt, teaspoonful thyme, 1 egg, VEAL Small breast veal (about 3 pounds), tablespoonful cornstarch.
Soak stale bread in cold water; when soft, put it in a towel, press out the water, place butter with minced onion over the fire, stir and cook five minutes without browning, then add the bread, stir five minutes longer, season with salt, pepper, thyme, and 1 egg, and mix. Have the butcher prepare the veal for filling, wash and wipe the meat dry, season inside and out with 1 tablespoonful salt and teaspoonful pepper, then stuff the breast, sew it up, lay the meat in a roasting pan, with slices of pork under it, spread over with butter, and lay a few slices of pork on top. Place the pan in hot oven, roast until the meat becomes light brown, basting frequently with its own gravy, add 1 cupful boiling water, roast about two hours longer, basting frequently until done; add more water should the gravy brown too much. Ten minutes before serving, lay the meat on a platter, remove the fat from the gravy, mix cornstarch with cupful cold water, add to it the sauce, stir, and cook three minutes, then strain, pour a little of the sauce over the meat, and serve the remainder in a gravy boat.
A stuffed breast of veal, roasted with salt pork for fat it does not have on its own. The text as printed has lost most of its fractions in transcription, so read the seasoning amounts as a guide rather than a formula.
- Missing fractionsThe stuffing line reads "teaspoonful salt, teaspoonful thyme" where the original very likely specified halves or quarters, and the cornstarch is slaked in "cupful cold water," which was probably some fraction of a cup rather than a full one. Season the stuffing to taste and use 2-3 tablespoons cold water per tablespoon of cornstarch.
- The hinge: keep the breast moistBreast of veal is lean, sinewy and full of connective tissue. The salt pork above and below and the frequent basting are not garnish; without them the meat dries out long before the collagen softens. Cover loosely with foil if the top colors before the two hours are up.
- Oven temperature"Hot oven" in manuals of this period is conventionally read as roughly 400-450F for the initial browning. The recipe gives no second setting; reducing to 325-350F after the cup of boiling water goes in is a modern accommodation to the long roast rather than the book's instruction.
- Slices of porkThis means salt pork or fatback, sliced thin, not fresh pork chops. Blanch salt pork a minute in boiling water if you want to temper the salt, particularly given the tablespoon of salt already rubbed on the meat.
- Salt on the outsideA full tablespoon of salt inside and out on a 3 lb breast is heavy by current taste, especially alongside salt pork. Two teaspoons total is closer to modern seasoning.
- Preparing the pocket"Have the butcher prepare the veal for filling" means a pocket cut between the ribs and the outer layer of meat. Ask for a bone-in breast with a pocket, or cut it yourself with a long thin knife. Close it with butcher's twine and a trussing needle; leave a little slack, as the stuffing swells.
- DonenessRoast to about 160F in the thickest meat, but the real test is tenderness at the bone. Two and a half hours total for a 3 lb breast is about right; a larger one will want longer.
- The stale breadUse dry, close-crumbed white bread, not a fresh airy loaf, which turns to paste when soaked and pressed. A cup of dry cubes is a modest amount of stuffing for a 3 lb breast, so double it if you want the pocket full.
- YieldA 3 lb bone-in breast serves four, perhaps five with the stuffing counted. Carve down between the ribs so each portion gets meat and filling.
Breast is among the cheapest cuts on the calf, and stuffing it is a classic way to make a small quantity of poor meat serve a table. The technique runs through French, German, Italian and Jewish cooking alike, and household manuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries return to it often for exactly the reason it appears here: the butcher does the awkward work of cutting the pocket, the cook supplies bread and an onion, and a three-pound cut feeds a family. The bread-and-onion filling bound with a single egg is the plainest form of the stuffing, distinguished only by thyme. Slices of salt pork laid over and under are a long-standing answer to lean meat, and the cornstarch-thickened pan gravy at the end is a comparatively late touch; an earlier cook would more likely have thickened with browned flour.