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Kernel of Veal in Ballotines
Lard a cushion of veal with strips of bacon that have been well-seasoned with mixed spicies, finely-chopped parsley, thyme and bay leaves, shallot, salt and pepper. Melt about one-half pound of butter in a stewpan, dredge the veal over with salt and pepper, put it in and stew over a slow fire. In forty-five minutes take the veal out of the pan and put it on a dish. Mix in with the butter four tablespoonfuls of grated bacon, one teacupful of pure olive oil, and a scant tablespoonful of chopped shallots. Fry these ingredients for a few minutes, then put in a dozen chopped mushrooms, one tablespoonful of chopped parsley, and season with salt and pepper and a small quantity of grated nutmeg. When well done pour the mixture over the veal and leave until cold. Afterwards cover the meat with thin slices of bacon, and wrap it with all its seasoning in a sheet of paper; fold it up securely seeing that the seasoning cannot escape, and bind it round with tape. Place it on a gridiron and broil over a clear fire for an hour or so, turning it occasionally. Take care not to allow the paper to burn. When cooked, place the meat on a hot dish, and serve. Kernel of Veal, Jardiniere Beat and trim a cushion of veal, and lard it with thin strips of fat becon two inches long. Put some slices of bacon and two sliced onions into a stewpan with two bay leaves, a few sprigs of parsley; add the cushion, pour over it one pint of white stock, cover with the lid, and place it in a moderate oven for three hours. Baste the veal occasionally with its own liquor; if the moisture becomes absorbed, pour in a little more broth or some water. Peel eighteen young onions, the same number of carrots, and the same of young turnips; the two latter should be cut the shape of pears. Blanch the vegetables; put one ounce of butter into a sautepan with one tablespoonful of moist sugar, melt it, and then put in the onions; cover them with stock, and stew gently until tender. Cook the carrots and turnips in the same way, only in separate pans. The cooking stock of the vegetables should be reduced to a thin glaze by the time they are cooked. Peel and boil about four pounds of potatoes, drain them when soft, mash them with a small quantity of milk or butter, press them into a border mould, and stand it in a bain marie. Put the glaze from the vegetables into a sautepan with one quart of brown sauce and about one breakfast cupful of the gravy from the veal, first freeing it from fat. Boil the sauce until it becomes reduced to rather a thick glace, skimming it frequently. When cooked, glaze the kernel or cushion and brown it under a salamander. Turn the border of potatoes onto a hot dish, arrange the glazed vegetables on the border, and place the noix in the center, Pour the sauce over the vegetables, and serve.
Kernel of Veal, Sauted Trim off the skin and cut a kernel of veal into small round pieces about one and one-half inches in diameter, beat and trim them neatly. Put one-fourth pound of butter into a sautepan, set it on a good fire, and when melted put in the pieces of meat with one or two tablespoonfuls of finely chopped parsley, toss until cooked, then place them on a hot dish. Pour one-half pint of well reduced veloute sauce into the pan with the butter, stir it over the fire until boiling, then move it to the side, and stir in the yolks of two eggs that have been well-beaten with two tablespoonfuls of cream. Pour the sauce over the meat, and serve.
Broiled Veal Kidney, Maitre d'Hotel Cut a veal Kidney in halves lengthwise, pound it lightly, sprinkle over a little salt and pepper, and dip each piece in butter that has been slightly warmed. Cover thickly the pieces of kidney with the butter and broil them over a clear fire, allowing about five minutes for each side. Place two ounces of butter in a basin, season it with chopped parsley, pepper and salt, squeeze in a little lemon juice and work it close to the fire until warm, though it must not be oiled. Put the maitre d'hotel butter on a dish, place the pieces of kidney over, and serve.
Four related veal preparations from Oscar's Waldorf kitchen, written for cooks with a coal range, a gridiron and a brigade to peel eighteen turnips. The vocabulary is the main obstacle, not the technique.
- What a "kernel" or "cushion" of veal isBoth terms render the French noix de veau, the large solid muscle of the leg (the inside/top round). Ask a butcher for a boneless veal top round roast, 3-4 lb; the sautéed version wants it cut into medallions from the same muscle.
- Old cup measuresA teacupful is variously reckoned at half to three-quarters of a cup in period tables, a breakfast cupful a generous cup. A gill, should you meet one elsewhere in this book, is half a cup.
- Grated bacon and moist sugar"Grated bacon" means firm fat back or slab bacon chilled hard and grated, or minced very fine — modern thin-sliced supermarket bacon will not grate. "Moist sugar" is unrefined soft brown sugar; light brown sugar is the closest thing now.
- Oven and equipmentA moderate oven is 350F. A salamander is an overhead broiler; a bain marie is a water bath, and the potato border mould can be any ring mould or a piped ring of mashed potato held warm.
- The paper parcelFor the ballotine use buttered parchment, not writing paper, tie with cotton butcher's twine, and cook it in a covered grill or a 350F oven rather than directly over coals — the instruction "take care not to allow the paper to burn" is doing a lot of work in the original. An hour of open-fire broiling on top of the 45-minute stew will take a veal round well past done; go by an internal temperature of about 145-150F and stop there.
- Fat quantitiesHalf a pound of butter for the initial stew and a teacupful of olive oil in the seasoning paste are generous by modern standards. A quarter pound of butter and a few tablespoons of oil give much the same result on a modern stove.
- Velouté and the egg finishIn the sautéed version the yolks and cream go in off the heat and must not return to a boil, or the sauce curdles. That is the hinge of that dish; hold it below a simmer until served.
- Veal kidneyFive minutes a side over a clear fire suits a kidney split lengthwise; it should stay faintly pink inside. Soak it briefly in cold water and trim the core first, which the original assumes you know. Maître d'hôtel butter is simply softened, not melted — "it must not be oiled" means do not let it break.
- YieldThe ballotine and the jardinière each serve six to eight; the sautéed medallions will stretch to four or more depending on how much of the kernel you use, and the kidney is a dish for one or two.
Oscar Tschirky — "Oscar of the Waldorf" — was never technically the hotel's chef but its maître d'hôtel, and his 1896 Cook Book collected some 900 pages of the international repertoire a grand American hotel was expected to command. These four entries show that repertoire in miniature: all are French in name and method, and most are built on the noix, the prize cut of the veal leg that French cookery treats as a roast in its own right, while the fourth turns to a veal kidney. A ballotine is properly a boned piece of meat rolled, tied and cooked in a bundle — the word is generally traced to the same root as "ballot," a small bale — and the paper-wrapped cooking here is the older cousin of en papillote, a technique that predates aluminium foil by centuries and did double duty as both flavour trap and shield against scorching coals. Jardinière, the feminine of "gardener," in cookery simply denotes garden vegetables: the plate of separately glazed spring vegetables, each turned to a uniform shape; carrots and turnips cut "the shape of pears" and eighteen of each is a fair measure of how much unpaid-looking labour stood behind a Waldorf dinner in the 1890s.