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Stewed Knuckle of Veal
Take a knuckle of veal, break the bone well in two or three places, put it into a saucepan with a bunch of sweet herbs, eight or ten shallots, a small quantity of whole black pepper, a blade or two of mace and salt to taste, pour over it five pints of water, put it on the fire, and allow it to boil gently until the water is reduced to two and one-half pints. Then take out the meat, strain the gravy, mix in with it two tablespoonfuls of flour, stir it over the fire until it boils, and cook it for ten minutes, stirring now and then. Then put back into the gravy the best part of the meat cut nicely from the bone, add a very small quantity of cayenne, lemon juice to taste, and two wineglassfuls of Madeira wine, and allow all to get quite hot. Garnish with sippets of toast, slices of lemon, and piles of forcemeat balls, and serve.
A plain braise-and-reduce, written for a kitchen that kept stock pots going all day. The whole dish turns on the reduction: five pints down to two and a half is where the gelatine from the split bone concentrates into something with body.
- The cutA knuckle of veal is the shank, hind or fore, bone included. Ask the butcher to saw it through in two or three places rather than attempting it at home; the marrow and cartilage are what give the finished gravy its gloss. Two to three pounds is a reasonable weight.
- MeasuresFive pints is 10 cups, reduced to five cups. A wineglass in this period is about 2 fl oz, so two wineglassfuls of Madeira is roughly a half cup. Use a dry or sercial-style Madeira, not the salted cooking bottle.
- TimingReducing ten cups to five at a gentle simmer takes around three hours, which is also about what the shank needs to become tender. Judge by the liquid level, not the clock, and keep it barely trembling — a hard boil clouds the gravy and shreds the meat.
- Sweet herbsA bunch of sweet herbs is a bouquet garni: parsley, thyme, a bay leaf, tied with string so it lifts out whole. A blade of mace is a piece of the lacy outer covering of nutmeg; a quarter teaspoon of ground mace substitutes, though it will not strain out.
- The flourTwo tablespoons of flour stirred straight into hot liquid will lump. Slake it in a little cold stock first, or work it into an equal weight of soft butter and whisk that in in small pieces. The ten minutes of cooking is not optional — it is what takes the raw taste out.
- FinishingCayenne, lemon and Madeira go in at the end and are only brought up to heat, as the recipe directs. Boiling the wine at this stage drives off the aromatics and leaves it flat, and hard boiling will cost the lemon juice its freshness.
- GarnishesSippets are small triangles or fingers of bread fried or toasted crisp. Forcemeat balls are a separate preparation — seasoned veal or pork forcemeat rolled small and poached or fried — so make them while the shank simmers, or leave them out.
- YieldServes four as a main course with the meat picked from one shank, more if you are serving it over rice or noodles to take up the gravy.
Stewed knuckle of veal is an old English house-cook's dish that arrived in American books largely unchanged: similar combinations of shank, sweet herbs, mace and Madeira can be found in early nineteenth-century English manuals, where veal was often a fixture of the polite table and the knuckle its cheapest useful piece. Its presence in Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection says something about what a great hotel kitchen actually was — the Waldorf's book runs to hundreds of recipes of exactly this kind, plain braises and reductions alongside the showpieces. The Madeira is the period marker. It had been the fortified wine of choice on American tables since the eighteenth century, and even as sherry and port gained ground it held on in the kitchen as the finishing wine for veal, terrapin and clear soups.