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Grenadines of Veal
Take a fireproof dish, and after sprinkling it with breadcrumbs put in it a layer of roast veal in slices, a layer of mashed potatoes, a layer of veal kidney, partly cooked, and cut into pieces and lastly a layer of potato. Cover the whole with a bechamel sauce into which you have stirred some grated cheese; put it to bake in the oven. Then make a brown sauce with any veal or kidney gravy that you have, and cook some mushrooms in it with pepper and salt; the sauce is to be served with the grenadine.
This is a leftovers gratin dressed up with a French name, and it works best if you treat the kidney with more care than the original suggests.
- The hinge: the kidneyVeal kidney turns grainy and bitter the moment it overcooks. Trim the core and any fat, sear the pieces briefly so they are barely coloured, and let the oven time finish them; they should still be pink inside when the dish comes out.
- "Fireproof dish"An earthenware or enamelled gratin dish, buttered and then dusted with breadcrumbs so the layers release cleanly. Nothing about the recipe needs a lidded casserole.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the cook was expected to judge it. Since everything but the kidney is already cooked, you are only heating through and browning: 375-400F for about 30 minutes is a reasonable modern equivalent.
- The layer orderAs written, potato is called for twice and veal only once, so read it as veal, potato, kidney, potato. Keep the potato layers thin or the dish reads as mash with garnish.
- Bechamel with cheeseThis is a Mornay in all but name. Make the bechamel slightly thinner than you would for a sauce, since it must sink between the layers, and stir the grated cheese in off the heat. Gruyere or a firm Belgian-style cheese is closer to intent than cheddar.
- The second sauceThe brown sauce with mushrooms is served alongside, not poured over before baking. If you have no veal or kidney gravy, a reduced brown stock will stand in; deglaze the searing pan for the kidney flavour.
- Grated cheese quantityUnspecified. About 2 to 3 oz to a pint of bechamel gives a sauce that browns without going stringy.
- YieldA dish built on one roast's worth of leftover veal and a single kidney serves four as a main course with the mushroom sauce and a green salad.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in Britain in 1915 from recipes contributed by Belgian refugees, and its character is thrift under pressure: cold roast meat, potatoes and a made sauce rather than a joint at the centre of the table. The name is a borrowing rather than a description. In French professional cookery a grenadin is a small larded medallion of veal, and calling this layered gratin a grenadine stretches the term considerably, which is typical of home cooking dressing a reheated dish in restaurant vocabulary. Veal kidney was widely eaten in Belgium and France, and treated as a delicacy rather than offal; its near-disappearance from English-speaking kitchens is arguably part of why this recipe now reads as more exotic than it was. The double sauce, one baked and one served apart, is the one flourish the book allows itself here.