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Veal, Braised Neck of
INGREof the neck of veal (from 3 to 4 lbs.), bacon, 1 tablespoonful of minced parsley, salt, pepper and grated nutmeg to taste; I onion.
VEAL, NECK OF. 2 carrots, a little celery (when this is not obtainable, use the seed), 1/24 glass of sherry, thickening of butter and flour, lemon-juice, 1 blade of pounded mace. AVERAGE COST, 3s. 6d.
Prepare the bacon for larding, and roll it in minced parsley, salt, pepper and grated nutmeg; lard the veal, put it into a stewpan with a few slices of lean bacon or ham, an onion, carrots and celery; and do not quite cover it with water. Stew it gently for 2 hours, or until it is quite tender; strain off the liquor; stir together over the fire, in a stewpan, a little flour and butter until brown; lay the veal in this, the upper side to the bottom of the pan, and let it remain till it is a nice brown colour. Place it in the dish; pour into the stewpan as much gravy as is required, boil it up up, skim well, add the wine, pounded mace and lemon-juice; simmer for 3 minutes, pour it over the meat, and serve.
TIME. Rather more than 2 hours.
SEASONABLE from March to October.
Veal, Roast Neck of. INGREDIENTS.-Veal, melted butter, forcemeat balls. AVERAGE COST, 10d. per lb.
Have the veal cut from the best end of the neck; dredge it with flour, and put it down to a bright clear fire; keep it well basted; dish it, pour over it some melted butter and garnish the dish with fried forcemeat balls; send to table with a cut lemon. The scrag may be boiled or stewed in various ways, with rice, onion-sauce, or parsley and butter.
TIME. About 2 hours.
SEASONABLE from March to October.
Veal Olive Pie (Cold Meat Cookery). INGREDIENTS for small pie. A few thin slices of cold fillet of veal, a few thin slices of bacon, forcemeat, a cupful of gravy, 4 tablespoonfuls of cream, puff-crust. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the cold veal, 1s.
Cut thin slices from a fillet of veal, place on them thin slices of bacon, and over them a layer of forcemeat, made by recipe, with an additional seasoning of shalot and cayenne; roll them tightly, and fill up a pie-dish with them; add the gravy and cream, cover with a puff-crust and bake for 1 to 1½ hour; should the pie be very large, allow 2 hours. The pieces of rolled veal should be about 3 inches in length and about 3 inches round.
TIME.-Moderate-sized pie, 1 to 1 hour, SEASONABLE from March to October.
VEAL-AND-HAM PIE.
Veal Pie. INGREDIENTS for goodsized pie.-2 lbs. of veal cutlets, 2 slices of lean bacon or ham, pepper and salt to taste, 2 tablespoonfuls of minced savoury herbs, 2 blades of pounded mace, crust, 1 teacupful of gravy. AVERAGE COST, 3s.
Cut the cutlets into square pieces, and season them with pepper, salt and pounded mace; put them in a pie-dish with the savoury herbs sprinkled over, and 1 or 2 VEAL PIE, slices of lean bacon or ham placed at the top: if possible, this should be previously cooked, as undressed bacon makes the veal red and spoils its appearance. Pour in a little water, cover with crust, ornament it in any way that is approved; brush it over with the yolk of an egg, and bake in a wellheated oven for about 1 hour. Pour in a good gravy after baking, which is done by removing the top ornament, and replacing it after the gravy is added.
TIME. About 1 hour.
SEASONABLE from March to October.
A Victorian braise in two stages: a long gentle stew in barely enough liquid, then a second browning in a roux made in the same pan. The second stage is what gives the dish its colour and is easy to skip by mistake.
- The hinge: brown the meat in the rouxAfter the veal is tender the liquor is strained off and a butter-and-flour roux is cooked to a brown in the pan. The drained joint then goes back in, upper side down, until it colours. Skipping this leaves a pale, watery braise with no depth.
- Quantity of meatThe opening line has lost its number, but the weight given is 3 to 4 lb of neck of veal. Best end of neck is the usable cut here; the scrag is bonier, and the book itself directs it to be boiled or stewed with rice, onion-sauce, or parsley and butter.
- LardingLarding means threading strips of fat bacon through the lean with a larding needle. Neck of veal is lean and dries out, so if you have no needle, tie a sheet of fat bacon or pancetta over the joint instead, or bard it with caul fat.
- Sherry measureThe wine quantity in the ingredient list is damaged and cannot be read with confidence. A Victorian wineglass is about 2 fl oz, and a half-glass, roughly 1 fl oz, suits the amount of gravy here.
- Mace and celery seedA blade of mace is one piece of the lacy covering of a nutmeg; about a quarter teaspoon of ground mace is equivalent. The direction to use celery seed in place of stalk celery is a substitution for when celery was not to be had, not a preference; a stick of celery is better if you have it.
- Liquid level and heat"Do not quite cover it with water" is deliberate, and the small quantity of liquor reduces to a concentrated gravy. Keep the pot at a bare tremble, not a boil, or veal turns stringy. Two hours is realistic for a 3-4 lb joint; check with a skewer.
- Finishing the gravyThe strained liquor is added back to the roux, boiled up and skimmed. Add the sherry, mace and lemon juice at the end and give it only the three minutes stated, so the wine keeps its edge and the lemon stays fresh.
- Season and cost"Seasonable from March to October" reflects the old seasonal supply of veal, and 3s. 6d. was the household costing figure of the day. Neither has any bearing on cooking the dish now.
Neck of veal was the thrifty end of a joint that Victorian cookery books treated as a middle-class staple: the best end could be roasted or braised for company, the scrag boiled down with rice or onion sauce, as the neighbouring entry in this book notes. The double treatment here, stewing then browning in roux, is an English adaptation of French braising, where a joint is cooked in a closed pot with bacon and root vegetables and then glazed. Larding with bacon rolled in parsley, nutmeg and pepper was standard practice for lean white meats before reliable oven control, since veal has almost no intramuscular fat and punishes any lapse in temperature. Mace, sherry and lemon juice together form the seasoning signature of English veal cookery going back well before Mrs Beeton, and appear in eighteenth-century receipts for the same cut.