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To Stew a Breast of Veal
SCOTCH COLLOPS (WHITE). 436. Cut them off the thick part of a leg of veal, the size and thickness of a crown-piece; put a lump of butter in a stewpan, and set it over a slow fire, or it will discolour the collops; lay some of them in before the pan is hot, and turn them over till the butter becomes of the consistence of a thick white gravy; put all together in a pot, and set them on the hearth to keep warm; repeat this till all are fried, then pour the gravy into the pan again, with a tea-spoonful of lemonpickle, ketchup, caper-liquor, mace, cayenne-pepper, and salt; thicken it with flour and butter; when it has boiled gently five minutes, put in the yolks of two eggs with a teacupful of thick cream; keep shaking the pan over the fire till the gravy looks thick, then put in the collops and shake them till they are quite hot; put them in the dish with balls and pickled mushrooms.
SCOTCH COLLOPS (BROWN). 437. Take a leg of veal, and cut some thin collops; fry them, and season with salt and nutmeg. Boil some gravy, and when they are done pour it into the pan, with ketchup, walnut-pickle, and port-wine, to the taste.
TO COLLAR BREAST OF VEAL TO EAT HOT. 438. Bone the veal, take some thyme, marjoram, pepper, salt, and nutmeg, a little pounded mace, shred suet, crumbs of bread, and a score of oysters; beat all these in a mortar to mix them together, strew the mixture thickly over the veal, then roll it up into a collar, sew it tightly in a cloth, and boil it three hours. Serve with white sauce; forcemeat-balls can be added, if liked. 439. Cut it in pieces and put it into a pot with a bunch of sweet herbs, a small piece of bacon, a little mace, and a few black peppercorns, salt, and one or two onions, and as much water as will cover it. Let it stew well over a slow fire. Boil some peas and lettuce by themselves, and, when the veal is stewed enough, strain the liquor from it, and put it into a stewpan with part of the liquor, the peas, lettuce, and a piece of butter, and let them stew again. Thicken with the yolks of two or three eggs and a little flour.
Another Receipt. - Cut it in the middle, bone it, and lay one part on the other, with half a pint of white wine and gravy made from the bones sufficient to cover it; add mace, cloves, whole pepper, salt, and two anchovies; when sufficiently stewed, put some oysters in, and thicken with flour and butter, after which keep stirring it until it is taken off the fire.
FILLET OR BREAST OF VEAL, TO STEW WHITE. 440. Let the veal be two or three hours in milk, or clean cold water, lay it in a stewpan and cover with water, allowing for its boiling away. Add twenty white peppercorns, and a little mace; before serving, add a glass of white wine, a little mushroom powder, lemonpickle, or lemon juice, and a small piece of the peel. Put in as much cream as will make it quite white, and thicken it with the yolks of two eggs. If that is not sufficient, add a little butter and flour well mixed together. Serve with boiled forcemeat balls, and garnish with lemon; a little good veal stock would be a great addition to this stew.
Recipe 439 is a stewed breast of veal in two versions: one finished with peas and lettuce, the other with wine, anchovy and oysters. Both are old-style braises thickened at the end with egg yolks, which is where the attention is needed.
- The hinge: the egg-yolk finishOnce the yolks go in, the sauce must never boil or it will curdle into grains. Beat the yolks with a little of the hot strained liquor first, return the mixture off the heat, and warm it gently while stirring until it coats a spoon, around 160-175F.
- Cut and timingA boned breast of veal cut into pieces needs about 1 1/2 to 2 hours at a bare simmer to become tender; "stew well over a slow fire" means barely trembling, not bubbling. Bone-in ribs may want the full two hours.
- Peas and lettuceThe recipe boils them separately, then finishes them in the sauce. Modern peas need only 3-4 minutes; shredded cos or butterhead lettuce needs a minute or two to wilt.
- Oysters in the second versionThe recipe gives no timing; add them in the last two minutes, off the boil, as longer cooking makes them rubbery.
- Lemon-pickle and mushroom powderStore-cupboard seasonings of the period, called for elsewhere on this page (436 and 440) rather than in 439. Lemon-pickle is no longer a commercial article; a strip of lemon peel with a squeeze of juice stands in. For mushroom powder, dried porcini or other dried mushrooms ground fine.
- AnchoviesThe recipe's two anchovies are whole salted fish, each giving two fillets and saltier than modern oil-packed ones. Use three or four oil-packed fillets, mashed, and hold back the salt until the sauce is finished and tasted.
- "Balls" and forcemeatWhere the book calls for balls it means forcemeat-balls, as at 438 and 440. A typical mixture of the period is breadcrumbs, shredded suet, chopped herbs and mace, bound and rolled small, poached in the stewing liquor for about 10 minutes.
- VesselsA "stewpan" is a wide, shallow, heavy pan with a lid; a modern sauté pan or shallow braiser is the equivalent. Anything that lets the pieces sit in one layer under barely enough liquid will do.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; a whole breast of veal, depending on size, will serve around six with the vegetables and forcemeat.
The breast is the cheap end of the calf, fatty and full of connective tissue, and nineteenth-century English cookery treated it as a long-stewing joint rather than a roast. The receipts on this page belong to the older "white" tradition of veal cookery, in which the meat is kept pale and the sauce is bound with egg yolk and cream rather than browned flour -- though the milk or cold-water soaking and the twenty white peppercorns belong to the fillet-or-breast stew at 440, not to 439. Bottled seasonings appear across these receipts -- lemon-pickle and ketchup at 436, walnut-pickle and ketchup at 437, anchovies in the second version of 439 -- and were everyday seasonings of the Georgian and early Victorian kitchen, used much as we now use soy or Worcestershire sauce. Peas and lettuce stewed with veal is closely related to French petits pois a la francaise.