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Braised Loin of Veal
Remove the bone from the loin, and lard it with thick strips of bacon. Place some thin slices of bacon in a stewpan, sprinkle over some chopped parsley, chives, a clove of garlic, a bunch of thyme, and some laurel leaves, put in the larded veal, season with salt and pepper to taste, cover with slices of carrots, onions and turnips, moisten with stock to a trifle more than half its height, and cook slowly for half an hour. When cooked put the veal on a hot dish, strain the sauce through a silk sieve, boil it quickly until reduced, then pour it over the veal, and serve.
Lion of Veal, Farmer's Style Stuff about seven pounds of the loin of veal cut from the best end with veal forcemeat, truss it and cover with a sheet of thickly buttered paper. Roast the veal in the oven for an hour and a half, basting frequently with butter. At the end of that time baste the veal with cream until it is well cooked (which will take about thirty minutes longer). When done dress the veal on a hot dish, mix the basting cream with a little hot bechamel sauce and water, pour it over the veal, and serve.
Two treatments of the same cut, printed together and easy to run into one another: the first is a braise of a boned loin, the second a stuffed roast of about seven pounds. Both assume a butcher who will bone, lard and truss for you.
- Read it as two recipesThe break comes at "Lion of Veal, Farmer's Style" — a typesetter's slip for Loin. Everything before it is the braise; everything after is a separate roast.
- LardingThreading strips of fatback or thick bacon through the meat with a larding needle is what keeps a loin, which has almost no intramuscular fat, from drying. Barding — tying sheets of fat or bacon over the surface — is the practical substitute if you have no needle, and some butchers will do either if asked.
- Laurel and chivesLaurel leaves are bay leaves; two are enough for a stewpan. The chopped chives and parsley go under the meat with the bacon and are strained out at the end, so they are seasoning the braising liquid rather than the dish.
- The half hour is shortA boned loin is not a shoulder and is not meant to fall apart, but thirty minutes will not carry a whole one to temperature. Cook to an internal 145F at the thickest point and rest it ten minutes; expect closer to 45 to 60 minutes for a boned loin in a covered pan at a bare simmer.
- Moisten to half its heightThis is a braise, not a stew — the meat is meant to stand clear of the liquid so the top roasts while the bottom simmers. Keep the pan covered and the stock at a shiver, not a boil, or the exterior will tighten.
- Silk sieveA fine mesh strainer or a chinois lined with a doubled square of muslin does the same job. Press lightly on the vegetables rather than pushing them through, or the sauce will go cloudy.
- Oven heat for the roastNo temperature is given because ranges were judged by hand. A moderate oven of 325 to 350F suits a seven-pound stuffed loin; two hours total, as written, lands about right, but check for 145F in the meat and 165F in the forcemeat.
- Buttered paperParchment, generously buttered, laid over the top and removed for the last stretch. Foil is not the same thing — it traps steam and prevents the surface colouring.
- The cream bastingSwitching from butter to cream for the final half hour builds a lightly caramelised coating and gives you the base of the sauce. Baste often; cream scorches in a hot pan, so keep a little water in the roasting tin and scrape it up as you go.
- YieldThe seven-pound stuffed loin serves ten to twelve. The braise, depending on the size of the loin, eight or so.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf from the 1890s, and his 1896 Cook Book is essentially a working record of a large hotel kitchen operating on classical French lines, translated into English for an American readership. Veal was central to that repertoire — mild, expensive, and endlessly adaptable — and a loin was among the more costly things a hotel could put on a table, which is why both versions here treat it with fat, cream and butter rather than long moist cooking. The label "Farmer's Style" is the standard rendering of à la fermière, a French kitchen term that generally signals root vegetables and a homely finish, though by the time it reached a Fifth Avenue hotel the rusticity was largely nominal. The instruction to strain through a silk sieve is a small period marker of a kitchen that clarified its sauces through fine cloth.