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Veal Fricandeau
A fricandeau-which is a roasting piece cut from the thick part of the leg-is not expensive.
It is laid on a bed of sliced onions and carrots and, because it is deficient in fat, should either be larded or covered with thin slices of salt pork, the fat of which is used for basting. Next day thin slices are cut from the best portion for lunch and the remainder converted into croquettes.
The entry assumes a cook who already knows how to handle a roast, so it gives no weights, times or temperatures. Here is what has to be supplied.
- What cut to ask forThe "thick part of the leg" is the veal cushion, sold today as top round or leg round. The recipe gives no weight; a 3 to 4 lb piece, tied, is a practical modern size.
- Larding, and the alternativeLarding means threading strips of chilled pork fat through the meat with a larding needle, which few kitchens own. The barding option the recipe offers — thin sheets of salt pork laid over the top and used as the basting fat — serves a similar purpose on the surface and is far easier. Blanch very salty pork briefly before using it or the surface of the roast turns harsh.
- Oven temperatureThe entry gives none. Start at 425F for 20 minutes to colour the pork fat and the vegetables, then drop to 325F for the rest.
- DonenessCook to an internal temperature of 145F at the centre and rest 15 minutes. Veal leg is lean; the older practice of roasting until the juices ran colourless leaves it grey and fibrous.
- The bed of vegetables is the sauceThe bed of vegetables -- Sliced onions and carrots under the meat will scorch in a dry pan; about a cup of stock or water lets them stew instead, and they can then be pressed or blended with the pan juices for a gravy. The recipe itself says nothing about a sauce.
- CoveringIn the classical French treatment a fricandeau is braised and then glazed with its reduced liquor, basted repeatedly at the end. This entry instead treats it as a roasting piece basted with the salt-pork fat; covering it for part of the time is a reasonable safeguard for so lean a cut.
- Yield and the second dayA 3 to 4 lb piece serves six to eight hot. The croquettes assumed here are chopped cooked veal bound with a thick bechamel, chilled firm, breaded and fried — the usual period use for the ends of a roast.
Fricandeau is a French kitchen term for a larded, braised piece of veal from the leg, glazed with its own reduced cooking liquor; it appears in English cookery books from the eighteenth century onward and is generally traced to the professional French repertoire rather than to home cooking. Veal leg is lean, and larding or barding was the standard technical answer to that problem. The instruction to slice the best of it cold for lunch and turn the rest into croquettes is the real argument of the entry, which is how a cookbook concerned with economy justified any roast at all.