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Stewed Breast of Veal
Blanch a breast of veal, put it in a stewpan with a bunch of sweet herbs, two onions each stuck with two or three cloves, the peel of half a lemon, a blade of mace, three ounces of butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Fry the veal for two or three minutes, but do not allow it to take color, then pour in one pint of hot water and stew it gently until tender. When cooked remove the long bones from the veal and strain the liquor. Put one ounce of butter and one tablespoonful of flour in a stewpan and mix them over the fire, then stir in the veal stock, add one teacupful of thick cream, and stir the whole over the fire until boiling; then move the stewpan to the side of the fire and stir in the beaten yolks of two eggs, the juice of half a lemon, and some oysters that have been blanched in their own liquor. Place the veal on a hot dish, garnish it with fried oysters and slices of lemon, and serve. Stewed Breast of Veal, Nantaise Trim three pounds of the breast of veal, make a few incisions on the top, and tie it round tightly with string. Place it in a deep sautepan with a piece of pork skin cut up, a carrot and a sliced onion, and cover with buttered paper; when it begins to color after cooking five minutes or so, moisten it gently with one pint of water or broth. Baste as often as possible, and allow it to cook for one hour. Place it on a dish, strain the sauce over, garnish with six stuffed lettuce heads and a few croutons of fried bread, and serve. Stewed Breast of Veal with Turnips Cut half of a breast of veal into small pieces. Put one-fourth pound of butter into a saucepan with three tablespoonfuls of flour, and stir it over the fire for a few minutes; then put in the pieces of veal and fry them until the meat has well set. Remove the stewpan from the fire, drain off the fat, pour in by degrees sufficient broth and white wine mixed in equal quantities to cover the meat, also put in a large onion stuck with three or four cloves, a bunch of sweet herbs and a small quantity of pepper. Place the saucepan on the fire until the liquor commences to boil, then move it to the side, and allow it to simmer. Peel some turnips, cut them into the shape of balls with a vegetable cutter, and blanch them for a few minutes; then drain, place them in a fryingpan with a lump of butter or lard, and fry them until lightly colored, seasoning with a little pepper, salt and a little sugar. Drain all the fat from the turnips, put them in with the meat and finish the cooking. When cooked skim the fat off the stew, turn it out on to a hot dish, and serve.
Three versions of the same cut, all built on the old white-stew method: set the meat without browning, moisten sparingly, finish with a liaison or a strained sauce. A few of the terms and vessels need translating.
- The cutBreast of veal is the belly section, bone-in and gelatinous, and it is a special-order item at most counters. Ask a butcher for a bone-in veal breast, roughly 3-4 lb; boneless veal shoulder will stew acceptably but gives a thinner sauce.
- Blanching the vealCover the meat with cold water, bring it to a boil, skim, then drain and rinse. This is a scum-removal step for a white stew, not cooking, and it is what keeps the finished liquor clear.
- "Do not allow it to take color"The hinge of the first recipe. Keep the butter below browning point and turn the meat only to firm the surface; any browning turns a blanquette-style dish grey-brown and muddies the cream sauce.
- Teacupful and blade of maceA teacupful in this period is reckoned variously at roughly 4 to 6 fl oz, so somewhere between half and three-quarters of a cup of cream. A blade of mace is one piece of the dried aril of nutmeg; a quarter-teaspoon of ground mace is the nearest substitute.
- Sweet herbsParsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf tied together — a bouquet garni. Tie it so it can be pulled out before the sauce is strained.
- The egg liaison"Move the stewpan to the side of the fire" means off direct heat, where the sauce is kept well below boiling. Temper the beaten yolks with a ladle of hot sauce first, return them, and do not let the sauce boil again or the yolks will curdle into threads.
- OystersBlanching in their own liquor means bringing them just to the point where the edges ruffle, under two minutes. Anything longer and they shrink and turn rubbery in the sauce.
- Buttered paper and pork skinIn the Nantaise version the buttered paper is a cartouche — parchment cut to the pan's diameter, laid directly on the meat. The pork skin (couenne) is there for gelatine and body; a piece of fresh pork rind or a split trotter does the same work.
- Oven or stovetopAll three are stovetop stews at a bare simmer. If you prefer the oven, a covered pan at 300F holds the same gentle heat with less watching. Reckon 1½-2 hours for the whole breast; the Nantaise hour is short for a 3 lb piece.
- YieldNone of the three states a number. A whole breast serves six; the turnip version, made with half a breast, serves three or four.
Oscar Tschirky's book collects the standing repertoire of a large American hotel kitchen around 1896, and breast of veal is a good index of how that kitchen thought: a cheap, bony, gelatinous cut redeemed by technique and by garnish. All three versions here descend from French practice — the first is a blanquette in everything but name, thickened with a velouté and finished with the classic liaison of yolks, cream and lemon; the third builds its roux before the meat goes in, an older order of operations still found in nineteenth-century manuals. "Nantaise" is one of the geographic garnish names of the period, generally associated with glazed turnips and peas, and the name is usually tied to root vegetables of the Nantes region. The oysters in the first recipe are worth noting: on the Atlantic coast in the 1890s they were abundant and cheap enough to be scattered over a stew of the least expensive veal cut on the carcass, an economy that reads as extravagance today.