No. 1487

Breast of Veal a la Bourdaloue

Poitrine de Veau a la Bourdaloue

Remove the bones from a breast of veal without touching the gristle; pick the skin with a trussing needle to extract all the air, and season it on the boned side; roll it up lengthwise and tie. Cover the bottom of a saucepan with a few minced vegetables, lay the breast on top, salt lightly and moisten to half its height with some unskimmed stock; add a bunch of aromatic herbs, put on the lid and let the liquid reduce to a glaze; remoisten to half its height and finish cooking the meat in a moderate oven, turning it over frequently during the time so that it gets a fine color all over. Before serving drain, untie, and keep it warm, while stirring into its gravy half a glassful of white wine; let boil, strain through a sieve, free it of its fat and thicken with a brown sauce. Dress the meat on a long dish and garnish around with veal quenelles, and small canapés garnished with chopped up ham, serving the sauce separately.

← No. 1486 Brains with Venetian or Green Holandaise Sau Veal No. 1488 Breast of Veal a la Mondoux →

For the Modern Kitchen

A braised, rolled breast of veal in the classic French manner: boned, tied, cooked in a covered pan until the stock glazes, then finished uncovered in the oven for colour. Ranhofer assumes a brigade and a stockpot; the method survives intact for one cook with a Dutch oven.

The hinge: reduce to a glaze, then remoistenThe first liquid is cooked down until it forms a sticky glaze on the pan bottom — that caramelised layer is the entire flavour base of the sauce. Do not let it scorch, and do not skip the second addition of stock.
"Moderate oven"Conventionally read as somewhere around 325-350F. The recipe does not say whether the lid goes back on at this stage; the instruction to turn the meat frequently for colour implies at least a partly uncovered pan, since a fully sealed one will steam it pale.
Unskimmed stockVeal stock with its fat left on, which bastes the roll as it cooks. Use a good unclarified veal or chicken stock; the fat is removed later, at the sauce stage, exactly as the recipe says.
"Half a glassful of white wine"Glass sizes in nineteenth-century books vary, a wineglassful often being reckoned at about 2 oz; read this as roughly 1 to 2 oz. Boil it in the degreased pan juices to cook off the alcohol before straining.
Brown sauceRanhofer means espagnole or a demi-glace, not a flour-and-water thickening. A few spoonfuls of reduced veal demi-glace does the job; failing that, reduce the strained gravy hard and finish it with butter.
"Pick the skin with a trussing needle"Pricking the outer membrane keeps it from ballooning and splitting as the roll cooks. A cake tester or the tip of a boning knife works; a dozen shallow punctures is enough.
TimingNone is given. A boned, rolled breast of 4–5 lb needs about 2½ to 3 hours at 350F, until a skewer meets no resistance. Breast is a collagen-heavy cut and improves with the long end of that range.
The garnishVeal quenelles are poached forcemeat dumplings and the canapés here are small fried or toasted bread croutons, not modern cocktail canapés. Both can be made ahead; the quenelles only need reheating in stock.
YieldA single breast serves six to eight. Rest the roll 15 minutes before untying and slicing, or it will fall apart on the board.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of the restaurant's repertoire, and its veal chapter is one of the fullest accounts in English of how French kitchens handled the cheaper cuts. Breast of veal is bony, gelatinous and slow-cooking — the sort of thing a household would stew — and the treatment here is the standard French rescue: bone it, roll it, braise it in its own glaze, then dress it as if it were a roast. The name honours Louis Bourdaloue, the seventeenth-century Jesuit preacher after whom a Paris street, the Rue Bourdaloue, was named; a number of nineteenth-century dishes, most famously the pear tart, were labelled à la Bourdaloue after that address, though the connection to any one pastry cook is traditional rather than documented. In Ranhofer's kitchen the label appears mainly to signal the garnish — quenelles and ham-topped croutons — French menu names of this period often describing the accompaniments rather than the meat.