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Roast Veal
Select a piece of veal suitable in shape for fitting in the cooker. As veal is usually very lean, add a little butter. Roast in the ordinary way with two hot radiators; bake from one and a half to two hours.
This is a fireless-cooker recipe: the food goes into a heavily insulated box along with soapstone or iron discs heated red-hot on the range, and cooks on stored heat alone. Almost nothing here translates directly, but the dish does.
- What a "radiator" isNot a heating radiator. Fireless cookers came with soapstone or cast-iron discs, called radiators or stone lids, that were heated on the stove top or in the oven until very hot and then placed above and below the food inside the insulated well. "Two hot radiators" indicates a heavier heat charge than the single radiator used for simmering.
- Roast in the ordinary wayMost likely this means the meat is prepared and browned as for a conventional roast before it goes into the well. The cooker supplies no browning of its own, so skipping the sear gives you grey, steamed veal.
- Oven equivalentA charged fireless cooker begins hot and falls steadily over the cooking period; no temperature is stated in the recipe. As a rough modern approximation, a covered roast at around 325F for the same one and a half to two hours, or a low oven with a preliminary sear.
- Judge by temperature, not the clockBecause a fireless cooker cools as it works, timing alone tells you very little. Veal is done at 145F at the center with a three-minute rest. This matters more here than in most old recipes, since a heat-retention cooker can easily stall a large roast below that point.
- Size the meat to the vessel"Suitable in shape for fitting in the cooker" is the practical constraint of the whole method. Choose a compact, evenly shaped cut of about 3 to 4 lb, such as a boned and tied shoulder or rump; a long thin roast will not hold heat evenly and a very large one will not cook through.
- The butter is not optionalVeal from milk-fed calves carries almost no intramuscular fat, and a sealed cooker offers no basting or fat rendering from a cap. Bard the roast with bacon or lay 2 to 3 tablespoons of butter over the top and cover well.
- YieldA 3 to 4 lb boneless roast serves six to eight. Any pan drippings should be reserved for gravy; the cooker produces less browning residue than an oven, so expect a paler jus.
Fireless cookery had a real vogue in American kitchens from roughly the 1900s through the 1920s, and cookbooks of the period gave it its own section. The appeal was fuel economy and safety: a coal or wood range could be lit briefly to heat the stones, then let go out while dinner finished itself in a straw- or mineral-wool-lined box. Home economics writers promoted it hard for working households and for summer cooking, when nobody wanted a hot range going all afternoon. Veal was a natural candidate, since its leanness rewarded the moist, enclosed environment of the cooker. The insulated box has its modern echo in the slow cooker, which achieves a similar long, gentle cooking by other means.