No. 1491

Breast of Veal Stewed with Roux

Ragout de Portrine Veau au Roux

Cut a breast of veal into pieces an inch and a half square; fry them without browning in some butter; then drain this butter off and moisten with a quart of stock. Make a roux not too dark; dilute it with a part of the stock, then throw in the veal, one carrot, two onions (one of them having two cloves in it) and a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf; season with salt, pepper and a pinch of sugar, and let boil slowly for one hour, then add forty small onions fried to a fine color in butter and twenty turned mushroom heads. When the meat is done, the sauce should be reduced to a proper consistency; dress the veal, lay the small onions around with the turned mushrooms; season the sauce, strain it through a sieve and pour it over the stew.

← No. 1490 Blanquette of Breast of Veal a la Jacquart (Veal No. 1492 Breast of Veal with Tomatoes, Queen Style—St →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's ragout is a straightforward brown veal stew, but the instructions assume a professional kitchen where stock, roux and garnishes are all standing ready. A few notes bring it into a home kitchen.

The hinge: fry without browningThe veal is sweated in butter only until it stiffens and goes opaque, not coloured. The colour in this dish comes from the roux and the glazed onions; browning the meat as well turns it muddy and heavy.
Quantities and yieldA whole breast of veal runs 4-6 lb bone-in; expect to serve six. One quart of stock is barely enough to cover that much meat in a wide pan, so use a deep, narrow pot or add a little more.
Roux, not too darkEqual weights butter and flour, about 2 oz of each for a quart of stock, cooked to the colour of peanut shell. Past that it loses thickening power and turns bitter, and this sauce has to reduce further.
Forty small onionsPearl or small pickling onions, roughly 1 lb. Frozen peeled pearl onions work and save considerable time; brown them in butter as directed before they go in.
Turned mushroom heads"Turned" means the cap pared with spiral grooves for looks. Twenty medium button caps, left whole and trimmed flat underneath, do the same job. They go in for only the last stretch of cooking.
TimingOne hour of slow simmering suits cubed breast, but bone-in pieces and modern larger veal often need 1 1/2 hours before the meat gives easily. Judge by the meat, then reduce the sauce afterward if it is thin.
Straining the sauceThe carrot, the clove-stuck onion and the herb bundle are aromatics only and are discarded with the sieving. Lift out the veal, onions and mushrooms first so they are not caught in the strainer.
The pinch of sugarProbably not for sweetness at this quantity; a pinch of sugar is commonly used to round off the acidity of a long-reduced brown stock, much as it is in a tomato sauce, though Ranhofer gives no reason for it.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) recorded the repertoire he cooked at Delmonico's in New York, and its veal chapter treats the same cut several different ways: the neighbouring entries alone give a blanquette and a version with tomatoes, and here au roux. Breast is among the cheapest and most gelatinous parts of the calf, full of connective tissue and cartilage that a slow brown stew converts into body in the sauce, which is why classical French kitchens treated it as ragout meat rather than roasting it. The garnish of small glazed onions and turned mushrooms is a conventional one of the period, and the same set of aromatics -- carrot, clove-stuck onion, parsley with thyme and bay -- recurs throughout Ranhofer's entries.