Oast Veal
Wipe the meat, dredge with salt, pepper and flour, and place it in a pan, with some butter or slices of salt pork or bacon, to provide basting fat. Roast, allowing from twenty to thirty minutes for every pound of veal. Baste every twenty minutes, using the liquid in the bottom of the pan for basting, as soon as there is sufficient. Make a gravy the same as for any roast, using the liquid in the pan.
A bare-bones roasting formula of the kind that assumed the cook already knew her range. The title is a printer's slip for "Roast Veal." Two things need attention: the missing oven temperature and the very long cooking time.
- Set an actual temperatureThe original names none, because a coal or early gas range was managed by feel. 325F is a reasonable modern working figure for a veal roast, with the first fifteen minutes hotter if you want colour on the surface.
- The timing is the real problemTwenty to thirty minutes per pound will take a 4 lb roast well past 180F internally — dry, grey and fibrous. Cook to temperature instead: roughly 145F for a loin or rib roast, rested, and 160F or a little above for shoulder and other collagen-rich cuts that want the extra time to soften.
- Barding, not seasoningThe salt pork or bacon is there because veal is exceptionally lean and has almost no fat cap of its own. Lay the slices over the top of the roast rather than beside it, or tie them on; a tablespoon or two of butter serves the same purpose but burns sooner.
- Dredge with flourThis means a light dusting over the whole surface, not a coating. It helps the exterior brown and thickens the pan drippings a little as they collect.
- Basting is optionalBasting mainly affects the surface rather than interior moisture, and each opening of the door costs you oven heat. If you skip it, cover the roast loosely with foil once it has browned.
- "Gravy the same as for any roast"Pour off most of the fat, leaving the browned juices, whisk in a scant tablespoon of flour per cup of liquid, cook it a minute, then add stock or water and simmer until it coats a spoon. Veal drippings are mild, so salt firmly.
- YieldReckon about 1/2 lb of bone-in roast per person, so a 4 lb piece serves about eight.
The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns, put out a cook book in 1911 for the same audience as its magazines, which explains the telegraphic style here: minutes per pound, baste, make gravy "the same as for any roast." Barding lean meat with salt pork was standard practice in the period and long before it, since veal, being from an animal only a few weeks or months old, carries little intramuscular fat and no protective outer layer to melt over it.