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Veal Croquettes
Take some cold veal, cut off the fat and skin, and chop the veal up very fine, seasoning with onion juice, celery salt, cayenne, chopped parsley, salt and pepper Oysters parboiled and drained may be used, taking half the bulk of them to the quantity of meat. Mix together well and moisten with well-beaten egg and white sauce. Make the paste into the shape of balls, and dip them first into bread or cracker crumbs, then in egg, and then in crumbs again; plunge them into a fryingpan of boiling fat, and fry until done and of a light brown color.
Curried Veal, Indian Style Cut into pieces two pounds of any kind of lean raw veal, place the pieces in a saucepan, cover with warm water, season with two pinches of salt and one pinch of pepper and add a garnished bouquet and half a dozen small onions; cook the whole for twenty-five minutes. Prepare one gill of white roux in a saucepan, moisten it with the liquor from the veal, stir it well and add one teaspoonful of moistened curry powder and three raw yolks of eggs, beating them up as they are put in. Place the veal on a hot dish, strain the roux over it immediately, as it must not cook again, garnish with a border of plain boiled rice, and serve.
Cushion of Veal, Bordelaise Braise a cushion of veal, and when tender drain it and cut into moderately thick slices; place them on a dish and cover them over; wash, drain and slice twenty mushrooms; put a chopped onion into a deep fryingpan with a lump of butter and fry for a few minutes without browning, then put in the mushrooms, season to taste with salt and pepper, and fry them quickly until the moisture has in part evaporated. Sprinkle a little flour over the mushrooms, one teacupful of finely-chopped parsley, and pour in one teacupful of gravy; stir the sauce and boil it quickly for ten minutes; place a layer of the stew on a dish and then a layer of the meat, another layer of the stew, and so on until all is used, finishing with a layer of the stew. Cover the above mixture with breadcrumbs, place a few bits of butter on the top and put it in a quick oven for twenty minutes, basting occasionally with the butter. When cooked drain the butter off the dish, pour a small quantity of rich gravy round it, and serve.
Cushion of Veal, Duchess Trim a large white cushion of veal and stud it with square fillets of raw truffles, dust over them a small quantity of salt, cover the studded part of the meat with thin slices of bacon, and truss it. Place some trimmings of bacon in a stewpan, put in the meat, pour some clarified butter over and braise for two hours in a moderate oven, basting it occasionally with the drippings in the pan. Cut some cooked potatoes into an oblong shape, like large dominoes, and glaze them. Garnish the dish on which the veal has been placed with the potatoes, and serve with a sauceboatful of brown sauce that has been reduced with white wine and essence of truffles.
Four veal dishes run together in a single block of text, as they do throughout Oscar's book. The croquettes and the curry are weeknight-scale; the two cushion recipes are hotel work built around a cut you will have to ask for.
- Cushion of vealThe "cushion" is the inside (top) round of the leg, boned and trimmed into a solid block — a butcher's cut, not a supermarket one. Ask for a boned veal top round; the weight varies with the animal, so anything from about 3 to 6 lb, or substitute a rolled, tied boneless shoulder for braising.
- A gillHalf a cup. One gill of white roux means roughly equal parts butter and flour cooked together to about 4 fl oz of paste — enough to thicken the veal liquor for two pounds of meat.
- Oven temperaturesA "quick oven" for the Bordelaise gratin is generally reckoned at about 400-450F; the "moderate oven" for braising the Duchess cushion at about 350F. Two hours at 350F, basted as the recipe directs, suits a cushion of this size.
- The hinge in the curry"It must not cook again" is the whole instruction. Three raw yolks beaten into the roux will scramble the moment the sauce simmers, so temper them off the heat with a ladle of the hot liquor and strain the sauce straight over the meat.
- Garnished bouquetA bouquet garni: parsley stems, thyme and a bay leaf tied together, sometimes with a leek green wrapped round. Remove it with the onions before saucing.
- Oysters in the croquettesParboil only until the edges just ruffle, about a minute in their own liquor, then drain well. Held longer they toughen and weep water into the croquette paste.
- Chill before shapingThe unstated step. Spread the bound mixture on a tray and refrigerate at least two hours until firm; warm croquette paste will not hold a ball through two crumbings and will burst in the fat.
- Frying fat"Boiling fat" means 350-375F, deep enough to float the croquettes. They are already cooked through, so you are only setting the crust — three to four minutes to a light brown.
- TeacupfulRead as about 6 fl oz, three quarters of a cup. A teacupful of chopped parsley for twenty mushrooms is a great deal by modern taste; a third of that is closer to a sauce than a herb salad.
- YieldTwo pounds of veal makes the curry for four. The croquette recipe is scaled to whatever cold roast you have; reckon on eight croquettes per pound of meat, serving three or four.
Oscar Tschirky was never technically the chef of the Waldorf — he was the maître d'hôtel, the front-of-house authority whose name the hotel's food traded on — and this 1896 collection reads accordingly: a professional's shorthand, printed with barely a paragraph break. The four dishes here map the era's whole range of veal cookery, from a thrift recipe that turns yesterday's roast into fried croquettes to a truffle-studded cushion glazed with potato dominoes for the dining room. "Indian Style" curry, thickened with roux and egg yolks and ringed with plain boiled rice, is the anglicised hotel version rather than anything from the subcontinent, and the curry powder is treated as a single seasoning to be moistened and stirred in at the end. Veal itself was far more common on American tables then than now, a by-product of the dairy herd and cheap enough that even the leftovers had their own named preparations.