Braised Veal
Select about five pounds of shoulder; remove the bone and tie the meat together to make it firm. Heat hot, in a kettle or stone crock, butter the size of half an egg and a few shavings of onion. Then season the veal with salt and pepper, put it into the kettle and cover tightly. Cook over a medium fire until the meat is well browned all over, turning it occasionally. Now set the kettle back where the contents will simmer slowly for two and one-half hours; but before doing so, should there not be enough gravy from the meat, add about two tablespoons of hot water. Serve hot with the hot meat. When cold the gravy will form a jelly to serve with the cold meat.
This is a dry-pot braise: the meat browns in its own fat and butter, then cooks in almost no added liquid, so nearly all the moisture comes out of the veal itself. A few notes on translating it to a modern range.
- The hinge: keep the lid tight and the heat lowThe whole method depends on the meat releasing its own juices and then reabsorbing them. A heavy pot with a well-fitting lid over the lowest workable flame, or a 325F oven, gives the slow, even heat the original assumes from a cooling range.
- "Butter the size of half an egg"Roughly one to two tablespoons. Old books put a whole egg of butter at anywhere from two tablespoons to a quarter-cup (about two ounces), so the measure is approximate.
- The stone crockDo not set an earthenware crock over direct flame; a coal or wood range presented a flat iron top that spread the heat, which a gas burner does not, and modern glazed stoneware can crack. Use a Dutch oven or other heavy lidded pot.
- Boneless shoulderFive pounds of shoulder with the bone out lands near four pounds of meat. Ask the butcher to bone and roll it if you would rather not. The bone can go in the pot for extra gelatin, though the recipe only says to remove it, and the shoulder itself carries enough collagen to set the gravy.
- Browning under a lidCovered browning steams as much as it sears, so it will take longer than open browning and the colour will be patchier. If you want a deeper crust, brown uncovered first, then cover for the long cook.
- Timing and donenessTwo and a half hours is about right for a rolled shoulder at a bare simmer. Judge by feel rather than a thermometer reading alone; braised veal shoulder is done when a skewer slides in with no resistance, well past the 145F that would suit a loin.
- Two tablespoons of water is not a typoThis is deliberately a nearly dry pot. Adding a cup of stock turns it into a stew and thins the gravy so it will not jelly. Add liquid only if the pot is threatening to scorch.
- The jellied gravyVeal shoulder is rich in collagen, so the concentrated pan juices set firm in the refrigerator with no gelatin added. Skim the fat off the top once chilled.
- YieldServes six to eight hot, with what is left over depending on how generously it is carved; the recipe clearly expects cold meat and jelly afterwards.
Veal was the everyday roasting and braising meat of American cookbooks around 1900 in a way it no longer is: dairy farming produced surplus bull calves, and shoulder was among the cheapest cuts on the block. The Butterick company, better known for dress patterns, published this book for the same middle-class household its magazines addressed, and the recipe shows the assumptions of a coal or wood range, where a pot could be pulled to the cooler back of the stovetop and left for hours without further attention. The closing line about the gravy setting to a jelly for the cold meat is the real point of the dish for that reader: one piece of meat, hot on Sunday and cold with its own aspic through the week, with nothing bought in to make it. Here the effect comes free with the roast.