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Stuffing for Veal
Trim off the skin and mince fine one-fourth pound of beef suet; mix with it one breakfast cupful of breadcrumbs, one tablespoonful of chopped parsley, two tablespoonfuls of finely-minced ham, and the grated peel of a lemon. Season the stuffing to taste with pepper and salt, and bind it with one beaten egg. It is then ready for use.
A plain forcemeat of the English school, meant to be packed into a boned breast or shoulder of veal. It comes together in five minutes; the only decisions are the fat and the crumb.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup — reckon it at a generous 8 to 10 fl oz, so roughly 1 to 1¼ cups of crumbs. The mixture should hold together when squeezed, not sit wet.
- Beef suetFresh kidney suet from a butcher, with the membrane pulled off, minced or grated while cold. Boxed shredded suet works; 4 oz of cold unsalted butter, grated, can be substituted, and gives a slightly richer, less crumbly result.
- CrumbsUse soft fresh breadcrumbs from a day-old loaf, not dried commercial crumbs, which will drink the egg and set hard. If all you have is dry crumbs, slacken the mixture with a spoonful or two of stock or milk.
- Grated peel of a lemonZest only, no white pith. One lemon's worth is assertive against 4 oz of suet, which is the point — the lemon and the ham are what keep the stuffing from tasting merely of fat.
- SaltSeason lightly. Minced ham brings its own salt, and the veal will usually be salted outside as well.
- Temperature, not timeThe egg and suet are raw going in, and stuffing packed inside a joint heats more slowly than the meat around it. Cook until the centre of the stuffing itself reaches 165°F; a stuffed shoulder needs longer than the same weight unstuffed.
- YieldRoughly 2 cups. Any surplus can be rolled into small balls and baked alongside the roast.
Suet-and-breadcrumb forcemeat is the backbone of nineteenth-century English roasting, and this is a near-textbook version of what cookery books of the period called simply "veal stuffing" — crumbs for body, suet for richness, parsley and lemon peel for lift, ham for savour, egg to bind. Cuts like the breast and shoulder are thin, lean and gelatinous, and boning them out to take a stuffing both stretched the meat and kept it from drying in a long roast. Lemon peel with white meats is in keeping with older English seasoning practice.