No. 1494

Calf's Crow a la Normande

Fraise de Veau a la Normande

After soaking a fine calf's crow, cut it up into quarter pound pieces. Lay on the bottom of the vessel intended for cooking this dish, first a layer of calf's feet cut in two lengthwise and the crow, on top a bed of minced onions and shallots, a little garlic and chopped parsley; season each layer with salt and mignonette, continuing until the vessel is full; then cover over with a piece of fat pork and add a bunch of thyme, bay leaf and parsley; pour over two bottlefuls of cider with a glass of brandy. Hermetically close the vessel by rubbing a little paste between it and the lid, and set it in a slack baker's oven for six hours; skim off the grease; remove the meat, free it from bones, place it on a chafing dish and strain the stock over.

← No. 1493 Breast of Veal a la Menagere Veal No. 1495 Veal Cutlets a la Chipolata →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Normandy cider braise of offal, essentially a cousin of tripes a la mode de Caen. Almost everything here is straightforward for a modern cook except sourcing the main ingredient and reading the oven instruction correctly.

What "crow" isFraise de veau is the frilled mesentery membrane and fat from a calf's intestine; "crow" is the old English butcher's word for it. It is not sold in supermarkets and will need a halal, kosher or old-style whole-animal butcher, ordered ahead. Cleaned honeycomb tripe is the nearest thing most cooks can actually buy, though it is a different cut and a different texture.
Soaking, and whyRanhofer says only "after soaking." Mesentery and tripe are soaked in several changes of cold water, usually overnight, to draw out blood and slacken the smell; many older kitchens also blanched it. If your butcher supplies it already scalded and cleaned, a few hours is enough.
Calf's feet are structuralThey are there mainly for gelatin. Split calf's feet in the pot are what turn the cider into the glossy, lip-coating stock that sets firm when cold; Ranhofer does not say how many to use. Ask for them split lengthwise, as he does; if unavailable, pig's trotters do the same work.
MignonetteCoarsely crushed peppercorns rather than finely ground pepper; in Ranhofer's usage this generally means white pepper, though the term is also applied to coarse black. Crush the corns under a pan bottom rather than grinding them fine, so the pepper stays in visible pieces through six hours of braising.
Two bottlefuls of ciderRoughly 1.5 litres, and it means dry French-style hard cider, not sweet apple juice or sweetened American cider. A glass of brandy is about 100 ml; Calvados is the regional choice and the more logical one here.
"A slack baker's oven"The falling heat of a cooling bread oven; modern equivalents for "slack" are usually given as somewhere around 250-300F. At that sort of temperature six hours suits collagen-heavy cuts, and a much hotter oven risks boiling the liquid hard and clouding the stock.
Hermetically close the vesselThis is luting: a stiff paste of flour and water rolled into a rope, pressed into the join between pot and lid, which bakes hard and seals in the steam. A heavy Dutch oven with a well-fitting lid, or a sheet of parchment under the lid, does the same job.
The fat pork lidThe sheet of fat pork laid over the top bastes the surface and keeps it from drying. Use fresh pork back fat or unsmoked fatty belly; smoked bacon will dominate the cider.
Skimming and servingSkim the grease while the liquid is still hot and loose, then bone the meat out before straining the stock over it. Ranhofer gives no yield; a vessel filled as he describes would feed a large table, and it is better on the second day.

A Little History

Fraise de veau belongs to the Norman family of long, sealed cider braises whose best-known member is tripes a la mode de Caen: offal, trotters for body, onions and a bouquet, shut under a luted lid and left in the falling heat of a bread oven overnight. Cider and Calvados stand in for the wine and marc of other regions simply because Normandy grew apples rather than grapes, and the acidity does the same work of softening tough connective tissue. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete professional reference, which is why a rustic provincial dish like this sits in the veal chapter a few numbers away from veal cutlets a la chipolata: he was cataloguing the French repertoire as a whole, not only what a Fifth Avenue dining room would send out. That an American cookbook of the period could assume its reader had access to calf's mesentery and split calf's feet says a good deal about how completely the nineteenth-century butcher sold the animal.