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Leg of Veal in Surprise
Lard the veal with fat bacon and lemon peel cut very thin. Make a rich oyster forcemeat to stuff it with. When stuffed put it in a stewpan, barely cover with water, and allow it to stew until tender and thoroughly done, then take it up. Skim the liquor well leaving no fat on it, and add to it a piece of butter rolled in flour, the crumb of a roll grated finely, a little mushroom catsup, a small quantity of lemon juice, one pint of cream and one-half pint of oysters; stir this over the fire until it thickens, let it boil for a few minutes, then pour over the veal; garnish with oysters fried in butter and slices of toasted bacon.
An old-fashioned braise dressed up as a roast: the "surprise" is the oyster stuffing hidden inside the boned leg. Most of the work is in the butchery and the finishing sauce, and the sauce is where the dish is won or lost.
- The hinge: the oysters go in lastThe half-pint of oysters stirred into the sauce needs no more than two minutes — they are done the moment their edges curl. Boiling them with the sauce for "a few minutes" as written gives rubbery oysters and a sauce gone watery from their liquor. Thicken and season the sauce first, then slip the oysters in off the heat.
- A whole leg of vealA full bone-in leg is a very large joint — well over 15 lb — and will not fit a domestic stewpan. Ask for a boned and tied veal top round or a shoulder roast of 4–5 lb, which stuffs and rolls neatly and serves 8–10. Scale the forcemeat and sauce accordingly.
- LardingLarding means threading strips of fat back or fat bacon through the lean meat with a larding needle, here alternated with fine julienne of lemon zest. If you have no larding needle, bard instead: lay thin bacon over the surface, tuck strips of zest beneath it, and tie.
- Oyster forcemeatA typical period oyster forcemeat is breadcrumbs, suet or butter, chopped oysters with a little of their liquor, egg to bind, and mace, nutmeg, parsley and lemon peel to season. Keep it slack rather than dense or it packs tight during cooking.
- Cooking time and donenessBarely covered and kept at a bare shimmer, a 4–5 lb stuffed roast takes about 2 to 2½ hours. Veal is at its best pulled at 150–155F at the centre of the meat; go by temperature rather than the vague "thoroughly done," since the stuffing contains egg and shellfish and should reach 165F.
- Butter rolled in flourThis is beurre manié — equal weights of soft butter and flour worked to a paste, then whisked into the simmering liquor in small pieces. About 2 tbsp of each lightly thickens a quart of liquor.
- Mushroom catsupNot tomato ketchup. Mushroom catsup was a thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice liquor used as a savoury seasoning; a tablespoon of it seasoned a whole sauce. Specialist grocers still sell it; otherwise a spoonful of mushroom soy or a strong dried-mushroom reduction gives the same purpose.
- The crumb of a rollGrated soft bread crumb, no crust — roughly 1/2 cup, used as a secondary thickener that gives the sauce body without pastiness. Add it with the beurre manié and let it swell before judging the consistency.
- Sauce orderSkim the braising liquor scrupulously, thicken, then add the cream and reduce briefly. The lemon juice goes in at the very end and off a hard boil; acid added to cream at a rolling boil in a salty, reduced liquor can curdle it.
Larded, stuffed and stewed joints of veal ran through English cookery from the eighteenth century onward, and "in surprise" appears in older cookery for a joint whose stuffing is concealed until it is carved — a conceit related to the eighteenth-century "surprise" pie. Oyster forcemeat belongs to the same tradition: oysters were cheap and abundant in the Atlantic ports through the nineteenth century, treated less as a luxury than as a workaday seasoning for meat, which is why they turn up in stuffings, sauces and steak pies rather than only on the half shell. Mushroom catsup, likewise, was a common bottled savouring of the period, predating widespread tomato ketchup. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, published his cook book in 1896, and much of its content appears to draw on received English and American household cookery as well as the hotel's own kitchen; this dish reads as an inherited English receipt — a formula for a large joint that could be carved before a table of guests.