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Veal in the Saucepan
Cut four pounds of veal about three inches thick off the fillet, roll it up, bind it round with tape, rub it over with flour, put it in a stewpan with a small lump of butter, and fry it until nicely browned all over. Pour one-half pint of rich gravy in with the veal, season it with salt and pepper, place the lid on the stewpan, and cook the contents slowly for four hours. When done, take the veal up, place it on a hot dish, first removing the tape, and keep it hot. Boil the cooking liquor quickly until stiffly reduced, then pour it over the meat and serve.
Veal, Italian Style Boil about one pint of milk with an onion and a bay leaf, for fifteen minutes; then remove the bay leaf, and pour the boiling milk over a heaping breakfast cupful of breadcrumbs. Chop fine one pound of raw veal and pound it in a mortar, mixing with it a small quantity of cold, cooked fat; then mix in the soaked crumbs, and pass the mixture through a coarse sieve. Divide it into equal portions, which mould into rolls with flour. Procure as many pieces of cloth as there are rolls, wring them out in boiling water, flour them, tie a roll in each, place them in a saucepan of boiling water, and boil from ten to fifteen minutes. When cooked, drain the rolls, remove the cloths, place them on a hot dish, pour some well-flavored brown sauce round them, and serve. Braised Kernel of Veal with Bechamel Sauce Remove the udder and pare a cushion of veal, lard it interiorly with fillets of bacon, and season it with salt and pepper to taste. Line a bakingpan with trimmings of bacon and ham and some sliced vegetables; put in the cushion with about one teacupful of broth, and place the cover on. Place some hot ashes on the lid, and braise it over a slow fire. Cut some mushrooms into slices, place them in a fryingpan with a lump of butter and fry until the moisture has reduced slightly. Season the mushrooms with pepper and salt, put them in one pint of reduced bechamel sauce, and boil them for two or three minutes, then move them to the side. When the veal is done, remove it from the braisingpan and cut it up into thin slices. Line the bottom of a deep dish with the mushroom mixture, then arrange the slices of meat on it, putting them into shape again, alternating each layer with a small quantity of the mushroom mixture. Place the dish in the oven until the surface of its contents is nicely colored, then remove it, garnish with croquettes of potatoes, and serve.
Three veal preparations run together in one block of type, all of them built on the hotel kitchen's habit of long, gentle heat and a good brown sauce made in advance. The hinge in each case is the braising liquid: there is very little of it, so the pan must be tight and the fire very low.
- Half a pint of rich gravyOne cup of well-reduced brown stock or demi-glace, not thickened pan gravy from a jar. Four hours of slow cooking with only a cup of liquid demands a heavy pan with a close-fitting lid; check at intervals and add a splash of stock if it threatens to go dry.
- Four hours is not a misprint, but the cut isFour hours is not a misprint, but the cut may be -- 'fillet' in this period may mean the leg or the loin, and either is lean enough to go dry and stringy long before four hours are up. The method suits shoulder, breast or shank far better; with a lean cut, judge by tenderness rather than the clock.
- TapeCotton kitchen twine does the same job. Tie at one-inch intervals so the roll holds its cylinder, and cut it off before the meat goes on the dish, as instructed.
- A breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is roughly 10 fluid ounces, so a heaping cupful is about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups of dry breadcrumbs. With a pint of milk poured over it the panade will be very wet; that is intended, but drain or add crumbs if it will not hold a shape.
- Mortar and sieveA food processor does the pounding in under a minute. Passing the mixture through a coarse sieve afterwards is what makes the texture smooth and is worth not skipping; the sieve catches sinew the blades only chop finer.
- Boiling in clothsThis is the old quenelle-in-a-napkin method. Scalded, floured muslin or a doubled cheesecloth works; tie both ends loosely so the forcemeat can swell. Ten to fifteen minutes suits rolls no thicker than about 1 1/2 inches, and ground veal should reach 160F at the centre, so give thicker rolls longer.
- Cushion of veal, and the udderThe cushion is the top round of the leg. Veal udder was used as a fat in period forcemeats, which is why the recipe begins by removing it; few modern butchers will supply one, so ignore that clause and simply trim the round.
- Hot ashes on the lidHeat from above as well as below, which a household range gave by burying the pot in embers. Braise the covered pan in a 300 to 325F oven instead; a teacupful of broth (about 3/4 cup) is all the moisture it gets, so the lid must seal.
- Bechamel, reducedA pint of bechamel boiled down until it coats heavily. Cook the sliced mushrooms until their liquid has largely gone before adding them, or the sauce will thin out and slacken the layered dish.
- YieldThe first recipe serves six to eight; the Italian-style rolls, from a pound of veal, four; the braised cushion depends on the piece, but a 3 lb top round will serve six with the mushroom bechamel and potato croquettes.
Oscar Tschirky was never formally the chef of the Waldorf, he was its maitre d'hotel, and his 1896 Cook Book reads accordingly: a compendium of the continental repertoire a great New York hotel was expected to produce on demand, transcribed at scale rather than developed dish by dish. Veal dominates that repertoire because it dominated fashionable French cookery of the period, being mild enough to carry a sauce and gelatinous enough to make one. All three of these preparations are recognisably classical French technique under loosely descriptive English names: a rolled fillet braised in its own scant liquor, quenelle forcemeat poached in cloths, and a larded cushion, the noix de veau, braised with broth in a bacon-lined pan and re-formed into its original shape before glazing. The instruction to heap hot ashes on the lid belongs to a coal-and-wood kitchen.