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To Stew a Knuckle of Veal (Fry it with sliced onions)
444. Fry it with sliced onions and a little butter till it is well prowned; put to it some good broth if you have it, otherwise water, and stew till tender. Then add lettuce, onion, cucumber, peas, parsley, and celery, previously cut up and stewed. Season with pepper and salt, and serve.
STEWED KNUCKLE OF VEAL, OR VEAL à la Bourgeoise. 445. Take a good-sized stewpan, put in a little butter, a few turnips, carrots, onions, spices, a little lean bacon, pepper, salt, and thyme, moisten with two spoonsful of broth, and let the whole stew for two hours on a very slow fire; cut the turnips and carrots in small shapes or squares.
A veal shank braise from the era before recipes carried quantities or times beyond "till tender." The hinge is that the garnish vegetables are cooked separately and folded in at the end, so nothing collapses into the sauce.
- What the cut isThe heading for knuckle of veal sits with 445, and 444 as printed never names its meat, so the identification is an inference. A knuckle of veal is the shank — the lower leg, bone in, marrow and all. Ask for veal osso buco pieces or a whole hind shank of about 3 lb; a bone-in beef shank behaves similarly if veal is hard to find.
- "Well prowned"Read as browned. Get real colour on all sides of the shank in butter with the onions before any liquid goes in; this is where the sauce gets its flavour, and rushing it leaves the finished dish pale and thin.
- Timing"Stew till tender" for a shank means 2 to 3 hours at a bare simmer until the meat pulls away from the bone; the companion recipe 445 gives two hours on 'a very slow fire'. The book specifies no oven, though a low oven around 300F will hold the same bare simmer. The gelatin in the joint will thicken the liquid on its own.
- Liquid levelThe instruction to use broth "if you have it, otherwise water" is genuine — the bone makes its own stock. Come no more than two-thirds up the meat and turn the shank once or twice so it cooks evenly.
- The garnishLettuce, onion, cucumber, peas, parsley and celery are stewed apart and added at the end. Give the celery and onion 8 to 10 minutes in butter, the cucumber and peas 3 or 4, and the lettuce and parsley barely a minute. Cooked with the meat for three hours they would disintegrate.
- CucumberPeel and seed it, and salt it briefly if it is watery, or it will shed a lot of liquid into a finished sauce.
- Seasoning at the endSalt only after the braise has reduced. A shank concentrates its liquid considerably, and salting at the start of a three-hour braise routinely overshoots.
- YieldOne good shank with the vegetables serves three to four, with rice, boiled potatoes or bread to take up the liquid.