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Leg of Veal Stuffed with Mushrooms
1 leg veal. 2 tablespoons butter. 1 can button mushrooms. 1 teaspoon minced onion. 1 1/2 cups fresh bread crumbs. 1/2 cup minced ham. Salt and cayenne to taste. 1/2 cup sweet milk.
Remove bone from veal with sharp knife. Make stuffing by frying in butter the mushrooms, bread crumbs, ham, onion and milk. Put this in leg of veal and bake, allowing 20 minutes to the pound.
A boned roast with a bread-and-ham dressing, written in the telegraphic style Mrs. Wilson used throughout — no oven temperature, no weight, no yield. The gaps are worth filling before you start.
- The size of the legA whole leg of veal runs 12 to 20 lb and will not fit most home ovens. A boned and tied half leg, or a boned shoulder, at 4 to 6 lb gives the same dish at household scale. Ask the butcher to bone and net it rather than working the knife around the femur yourself.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Veal at 20 minutes to the pound implies a moderate oven, 325-350F. Anything hotter dries the outer inch before the stuffing warms through.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockTwenty minutes a pound was calculated for meat taken well past done. Pull the roast at 145F in the thickest muscle and rest it 15 minutes; the stuffing should read 165F. Start checking a thermometer early rather than trusting the stated time.
- "Sweet milk"Plain fresh whole milk, named to distinguish it from the sour or buttermilk that older recipes call for by preference. Any whole milk works.
- The canned mushroomsA period can of button mushrooms is roughly 4 to 8 oz drained. Drain them well and pat dry, or the stuffing turns to paste. Fresh browned buttons, about 8 oz, are better and closer to what the dish is reaching for.
- "Frying" the stuffingCook the mushrooms, ham and onion in the butter first, then take the pan off the heat before stirring in crumbs and milk. Frying the milk and crumbs together only scorches them. The mixture should be moist and loose, not a fried cake.
- Veal is leanThere is no fat cap to protect the roast. Lay bacon or a sheet of fat over the top, or baste every 20 minutes, and keep a little water or stock in the pan.
- Tying and yieldRoll the stuffing inside the boned leg and tie at 1-inch intervals, or the dressing escapes as the meat contracts. A 5 lb boned half leg serves eight to ten with the stuffing.
Mary A. Wilson wrote for the Ladies' Home Journal during and just after the First World War, and her cookbook carries the marks of that moment: terse instruction, a household expected to know what a moderate oven felt like, and a frank reliance on tinned goods. The can of button mushrooms here is the tell — commercially canned mushrooms were available to American cooks year-round by the 1910s, though much of the supply was imported and the price was not necessarily low, standing in for a fresh ingredient that was still seasonal and expensive. Stuffing a boned joint is far older, a technique European cookery had used for centuries to stretch a large cut and give it a second, richer element, and veal took to it well because the meat is mild enough to carry the seasoning of ham and cayenne without argument. Veal itself was more ordinary on American tables then than now, a byproduct of the dairy herd rather than a specialty purchase.