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Braised Shoulder of Veal
Bone, stuff, and sew in shape five pounds shoulder of veal; then cook same as Braised Beef, adding with vegetables two sprigs thyme and one of marjoram.
This is a cross-reference recipe: the whole method lives under Braised Beef, which means browning the meat hard, setting it on a bed of cut vegetables with a modest amount of liquid, and cooking it covered and slow for hours. What follows fills in what the original assumes you already know.
- The hinge: keep the liquid low and the pot coveredBraising is not stewing. Liquid should come no more than a third of the way up the roll, so the top surface roasts while the base simmers. A tight lid, or foil under the lid, does the rest.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives no temperature; a modern equivalent for this kind of covered braise is around 300-325F, at which a five-pound stuffed shoulder will want roughly 3 to 3 1/2 hours.
- Ask the butcher to bone itBoning a veal shoulder cleanly is fussy, tendon-heavy work, so order it boned and butterflied. Note that the recipe's five pounds is the shoulder before boning, so the boned meat will weigh appreciably less.
- Stuffing, unspecifiedThe book leaves "stuff" to the reader's judgment; a plain soft bread-crumb stuffing with butter, salt, pepper and a little onion or sage suits it. Stuff loosely, since it swells.
- Sew or tieButcher's twine tied at 1 1/2-inch intervals holds the roll as well as sewing and comes off in one pull. Roll the stuffing inside the meat rather than packing it into a cavity.
- Herb quantitiesTwo sprigs thyme and one of marjoram is about 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme and 1/4 teaspoon dried marjoram. Fresh sprigs go in whole and are fished out with the vegetables.
- When it is doneVeal shoulder is connective-tissue meat and wants 190-195F internal, not the 145F used for chops. Judge by a skewer sliding out with no resistance; a thermometer stuck into the stuffing will read low.
- Yield and the sauceServes 8. Rest the roll 15 minutes before slicing, and strain and reduce the pan liquid, or thicken it with a spoonful of flour-and-butter paste, for gravy.
Braising was the American cooking school's answer to a cheap, sinewy cut: the technique is generally traced to Fannie Farmer's 1896 book, which treats it as a distinct method with its own rules, and the shoulder recipes are written as short variations on the master method rather than repeated in full. Veal was more common on the turn-of-the-century Northeastern table than it is now, since dairy herds produced bull calves that had to be sold young, and shoulder was among the least expensive parts of an already inexpensive animal. Boning, stuffing and rolling turned an awkward, bone-riddled piece into something that could be carried to the table whole and carved in neat rounds, which mattered in households where the appearance of a joint counted as much as its cost. The thyme and marjoram are a small nod to French practice, veal being lean and mild enough that aromatics supply a savor it would otherwise lack.