Important: Safety Warning
This recipe calls for animal brains or related nervous-system tissue. Cattle brain and spinal tissue can transmit bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the cause of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, which is fatal and has no treatment.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Braised Fillet of Veal
Choose a nice piece of fillet of veal, any part can be used; put a good sized lump of butter in a saucepan to melt; put in the veal and brown it on both sides. Pour clear broth or water over the veal, place the cover on, and steam over a clear fire, basting occasionally with its own liquor. Peel and slice a carrot and onion, and put them into a saucepan with a small quantity each of lemon peel, mace and thyme; pour in one-half pint of water and boil for twenty minutes. Strain the seasoned water over the veal, and continue cooking it. When the meat is tender, drain, place it on a hot dish and garnish with slices of lemon and crisped slices of bacon. Skim the fat off the cooking liquor, strain it through a fine hair sieve, and serve with the meat in a sauce tureen.
Roasted Fillets of Veal with Fine Herbs Lard the fillets with thin strips of bacon, place them in a deep dish with some finely-chopped mushrooms, shallots, chives, parsley, fennel, laurel leaves and thyme; sprinkle a small quantity of salt, pepper and grated nutmeg over them, cover them with olive oil and let soak for three hours. Drain the oil from the fillets, cover them with the mixed herbs, wrap them in thickly-buttered sheets of paper, fastening them securely to keep the herbs in, and roast them in a good hot oven. When cooked take the paper off the fillets and scrape off the herbs. Put them in a saucepan with some gravy, a little lemon-juice and a lump of butter and boil it. Beat the yolk of an egg with a small piece of warmed butter, rub the fillets in this and then in grated breadcrumbs, giving them a good coating and brown them in a quick oven. When cooked, place the fillets on a folded napkin on a hot dish garnished with fried parsley, and serve them with sauce in a sauceboat. Fillet of Veal with Brain Fritters Cut off a fillet from a leg of veal and rub it well over with the juice of a large mushroom, extracted by breaking it up and sprinkling salt over. If a little grated orange-peel and cayenne are added it will be improved. Dip the fillet in flour, brush over with egg, plunge it into boiling fat and fry it, or wrap it in oiled paper and grill it over a clear fire. Cut a calf's brain into equal-sized pieces, blanch and stew in stock for about fifteen minutes. Prepare a rather thick batter with the yolk of an egg, two ounces of flour, one-half tablespoonful of olive oil and warm butter; when ready, beat in the white of an egg whipped to a froth. Drain the pieces of brain, dip them into the batter, plunge into boiling fat, fry and drain them. Place the fillet on a dish, arrange the brain fritters and some fried slices of potato round, also sprigs of fried parsley, and serve with thick brown sauce in a sauceboat.
Three related veal preparations run together in one block, in the compressed hotel-kitchen shorthand of 1896: a braise, a roast in buttered paper, and a fried fillet with brain fritters. The braise is the practical one for a home cook; the other two assume a brigade and a coal range.
- What "fillet of veal" meansNot tenderloin. In this period the fillet is the boneless leg muscle — what a butcher now sells as top round or cushion. Ask for a 3-4 lb tied piece; it is lean and needs the moist heat the first recipe gives it.
- The hinge: low and slow, barely covered"Steam over a clear fire" means a bare simmer with the lid on, liquid coming perhaps a third of the way up the meat. Hold it at 300-325F in the oven or the faintest bubble on the stovetop for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Veal round driven at a boil turns dry and stringy no matter how much liquor you baste with.
- MeasuresHalf a pint of water is one cup. A "good sized lump of butter" is 2-3 tablespoons; the "lump" in the roasted fillet sauce is perhaps a tablespoon. Two ounces of flour for the fritter batter is about half a cup.
- Oven temperaturesA "good hot oven" for the paper-wrapped fillets is 400-425F; the "quick oven" for browning the crumb coating is 450F, or use a broiler and watch it. The original gives no roasting time — figure 20-25 minutes per pound and pull at 145F internal, then rest.
- Buttered paperSubstitute parchment, well buttered, tied with kitchen twine. Ordinary printer paper and foil will not do the same job: parchment holds the herb paste against the meat and lets a little steam escape.
- Herbs and flavouringsLaurel leaves are bay. Fennel here means the feathery fronds, not the bulb. Blade mace is worth seeking out for the braise, but 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg will stand in. Lemon peel means pared zest with no pith.
- Hair sieveA fine-mesh conical strainer, or a regular sieve lined with damp cheesecloth. Skim the fat first, as directed — the braising liquor is the sauce and there is no thickener in it.
- Calf's brainBrain from young cattle remains legal in the United States but is effectively absent from retail and generally has to be special-ordered; it is banned outright in some countries. Sweetbreads, prepared the same way, are a common modern substitution for the fritters.
- YieldA 3-4 lb braised fillet with its sauce serves six to eight, with the lemon slices and bacon as the only garnish the dish needs.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf, and later the Waldorf-Astoria, from 1893 onward; his 1896 volume gathers roughly nine hundred pages of the hotel's working repertoire, written for professionals and set down in the terse, run-on style of kitchen dictation. Veal fills many of those pages: mild enough to carry a sauce, and endlessly divisible into the fillets, escalopes and grenadins a long hotel menu required. The paper-wrapped roast is a form of en papillote cookery that predates reliable oven thermostats: the buttered sheet shielded lean meat from the fierce, uneven heat of a coal range while trapping the herb mixture against it.