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Veal, Stewed Breast of, and Peas
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons. -Breast of veal, 2 oz. of butter, a bunch of savoury herbs, including parsley; 2 blades of pounded mace, 2 cloves, 5 or 6 young onions, 1 strip of lemon-peel, 6 allspice, teaspoonful of pepper, 1 teaspoonful of salt, thickening of butter and flour, 2 tablespoonfuls of sherry, 2 tablespoonfuls of tomato sauce, 1 tablespoonful of lemon-juice, 2 tablespoonfuls of mushroom ketchup, green peas. AVERAGE COST, 3s. 6d.
Cut the breast in half, after removing the bone underneath, and divide the meat into convenient-sized pieces. Put the butter into a frying-pan, lay in the pieces of veal, and fry until of a nice brown colour.
Now place these in a stewpan with the herbs, mace, cloves, onions, lemon-peel, allspice and seasoning; pour over them just sufficient boiling water to cover the meat; well close the lid, and let the whole simmer very gently for about 2 hours. Strain off as much gravy as is required, thicken it with butter and flour, add the remaining ingredients, skim well, let it simmer for about 10 minutes, then pour it over the meat. Have ready some green peas, boiled separately; sprinkle these over the veal, and serve. It may be garnished with forcemeat balls, or rashers of bacon curled and fried. Instead of cutting up the meat, many persons prefer it dressed whole; in that case it should be half roasted before the water, etc., are put to it.
TIME.-2¼ hours.
SEASONABLE from March to October.
Veal à la Bourgeoise. (Excellent.) - INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-2 to 3 lbs. of the loin or neck of veal, 10 or 12 VEAL CAKE. young carrots, 1 bunch of green onions, 2 slices of lean bacon, 2 blades of pounded mace, 1 bunch of savoury herbs, pepper and salt to taste, a few new potatoes, 1 pint of green peas. AVERAGE COST, 3s. 6d.
Cut the veal into cutlets, trim them, and put the trimmings into a stewpan with a little butter; lay in the cutlets and fry them a nice brown colour on both sides. Add the bacon, carrots, onions, spice, herbs and seasoning; pour in about a pint of boiling water, and stew gently for 2 hours on a very slow fire. When done, skim off the fat, take out the herbs, and flavour the gravy with a little tomato sauce and ketchup. Have ready the peas and potatoes, boiled separately; put them with the veal, and serve.
TIME.-2 hours.
SEASONABLE from June to August with peas; rather earlier when these are omitted.
Veal Cake. (A Convenient Dish for a Picnic.)-INGREDIENTS for moderate-sized dish.-A few slices of cold roast veal, a few slices of cold ham, 2 hard-boiled eggs, 2 tablespoonfuls of minced parsley, a little pepper, good gravy. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the cold meat, 4d.
Cut off all the brown outside from the veal, and cut the eggs into slices. Procure a pretty mould; lay veal, ham, eggs and parsley in layers, with a little pepper between them, and when the mould is full, get some strong stock, and fill up the shape.
Bake for 1/2 hour, and, when cold, turn out.
TIME. hour.
SEASONABLE at any time. -
Three related dishes: a long-simmered breast of veal, a lighter cutlet stew, and a cold moulded veal cake for travelling. All three assume a coal range and a cook who knows what "thickening of butter and flour" means.
- The hinge: keep it barely simmeringBreast of veal is a collagen-rich cut and needs two hours at a bare tremble, not a boil, or the muscle fibres tighten and squeeze out before the connective tissue melts. The lid must be close-fitting; the liquid should cover the meat and move only faintly.
- The stewing timeThe printed page gives "TIME.-2¼ hours" for the stewed breast, which is what our text now reads. That matches the method: about two hours of gentle simmering, plus the ten minutes for the thickened gravy.
- Quantity of meatA whole breast of veal is a large cut, commonly four pounds or more bone-in, and will feed six. The recipe's split ingredient columns for three and six persons were lost in transcription. Ask a butcher to remove the underlying rib bones, or buy it boned and roll it.
- Blades of mace, poundedMace blades are the dried lacy covering of nutmeg, still sold whole in some spice shops. A blade weighs very little; two blades pounded come to somewhere between a quarter and half a teaspoon of ground mace, added at the same stage.
- Thickening of butter and flourThis is beurre manie: equal weights of soft butter and flour kneaded to a paste and whisked into the hot strained gravy off the boil. About 1/2 oz of each per half pint of liquid gives a light sauce.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup but a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, still made by a few British firms. If you cannot find it, a mixture of soy sauce and a little mushroom soaking liquid gives the same savoury register, though the original is more acidic.
- The peasCooked separately and scattered over at the end, which is right. Modern shelled or frozen peas want two to three minutes in salted water; the twenty minutes the Victorian kitchen gave to mature garden peas will turn them grey.
- Forcemeat balls and curled baconThe garnish means small poached or fried balls of veal or pork forcemeat, and thin streaky rashers rolled and fried until they hold their curl. Both are optional and neither affects the stew.
- Oven for the veal cakeThe recipe says only "Bake for 1/2 hour" and gives no oven heat; a moderate oven long enough to set the filling is all that is wanted. The dish depends on a genuinely gelatinous stock made from veal bones or trotters; a thin modern stock will not set, and a little leaf gelatine dissolved in it is the practical fix. Chill, turn out, and keep it cold until served.
- SeasonableThe a la bourgeoise range is explicitly pea-driven: the recipe itself says "from June to August with peas; rather earlier when these are omitted." The breast of veal's March-to-October span tracks the season given for veal. With frozen peas the stews work year round.
Breast of veal was one of the cheap cuts of an already fashionable meat, and stewing it with mace, cloves, allspice and lemon-peel belongs to a spicing tradition that reaches back past Mrs Beeton into eighteenth-century English cookery, where sherry and a bottled ketchup did the work later given to stock reductions. The trio of bottled flavourings here, sherry, tomato sauce and mushroom ketchup, is a good marker of the mid-Victorian larder: commercially made sauces had become cheap and ubiquitous, and recipe writers used them freely to sharpen a long-simmered gravy. Veal cake belongs to the same economy from the other end, using up cold roast joints in a mould set with the gelatine of a strong veal stock, and its recommendation "for a picnic" reflects the Victorian enthusiasm for portable pressed and moulded meats that travelled in a basket without a plate or a knife to carve them.}