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Stewed Kernel of Veal
Saw the knuckle off a leg of veal, lay the fillet on the table, cut through the bone in the center under the udder until the skin is cut through, then remove the bone and lay out the meat. There will be separate pieces of meat, the largest of which is the kernel. Cut it out by pressing the hand upon it, and then with a sharp knife cut down close to the skin until it comes to the udder; then take the piece of meat out, and lay it on the table, the best side down and beat it well. Trim this meat neatly, and lard it with thin strips of fat bacon. Cut off the udder and secure it to the side of the kernel. Line a flat stewpan with pieces of bacon and two sliced onions, put in the veal with a bunch of sweet herbs and two bay leaves, and pour in two breakfast cupfuls of clear broth. Place the stewpan in a moderate oven, and cook the contents for three hours, basting the meat occasionally with some of its own cooking liquor. Should all the moisture become absorbed, a small quantity of water may be added. When cooked take the veal out of the stewpan, glaze it and brown it lightly with a salamander. Lay it on a hot dish, and keep it hot while the sauce is being prepared. Strain the cooking gravy through a fine hair sieve into a small saucepan, season it with pepper, and boil it up. Then pour the gravy over the kernel, and serve.
This is a classic braise of the noix — the rounded eye muscle of the veal leg — written for a kitchen that bought whole legs and broke them down itself. Almost all of the difficulty is in the first four sentences; the cooking is straightforward.
- What the "kernel" isThe kernel is the noix de veau, the large rounded muscle on the inner side of the leg, roughly corresponding to the top round. A butcher can cut the piece for you and you can skip the whole boning-out passage.
- The udderVeal udder (tétine) was used in nineteenth-century French professional kitchens and is essentially unobtainable now. Here it appears to be fixed to the kernel to shield the lean muscle from drying; a sheet of caul fat or a thin layer of fatback tied over the meat would do the same work.
- LardingLean veal leg has almost no internal fat and will be dry after three hours unless it is larded. Use a larding needle with strips of firm fatback or unsmoked bacon, or at minimum bard the outside heavily. Smoked bacon will dominate the flavour.
- Moderate ovenRead this as roughly 325–350F. The recipe does not say whether the pan is covered, so watch the liquid rather than the clock.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is usually reckoned at 8–10 fl oz, so roughly 16–20 fl oz of broth in all. That is a shallow braise, not a submersion, which is why the basting instruction matters.
- Three hoursLong by modern standards for a lean leg muscle, but this is a braise aimed at sliceable tenderness rather than pink meat. Test at two hours: a skewer should meet no resistance, and the internal temperature will be well past 160F.
- Glaze and salamanderTo glaze means to brush with reduced veal stock until it shines. The salamander was an iron plate heated red and passed over the surface; a broiler set high for a minute or two, or a kitchen torch, gives the same light browning.
- Hair sieveA fine-mesh strainer. Skim the fat from the strained liquor before boiling it up, or the sauce will break over the meat on the platter.
- YieldA 3–4 lb noix will serve six to eight, carved across the grain in thin slices. The sauce is a light natural gravy, not a thickened one; the recipe has it poured over the meat.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection is a professional French kitchen written down in English, and this entry shows it: noix de veau braisée was one of the standard hot entrées of the period, cooked whole, glazed to a shine and carved at the sideboard. The English word "kernel" for the eye of the veal leg is often said to be a literal rendering of the French noix, nut, and it had largely dropped out of American use by the mid-twentieth century as legs of veal stopped arriving whole in domestic kitchens. The instruction to secure the udder to the kernel points the same way — veal udder was a routine larding and barding fat in French charcuterie and grande cuisine, valued for being bland and gelatinous, and it is generally thought to have fallen out of use in the English-speaking trade at some point before veal itself became an occasional purchase. Oscar also has the cook begin by sawing off the knuckle and boning the leg.