No. 1520

Kernel of Veal a la Duchess

Noix de Veau a la Duchesse

Select a good kernel from a fat calf, retain the udder and pare the fleshy part of the kernel which is not covered; trim nicely and remove the skin that covers the meat and stud it over with square pieces of truffles one inch long and pointed on one end; salt the meat lightly and cover the studded part with some slices of fat pork, tying them down. Lay the kernel in a deep sautoir lined with fragments of suet or fat pork, and pour over a little melted butter and a little stock (No. 194a), let cook in a moderate oven for two or three hours according to its size, basting it with the drippings in the pan. When done, untie and dress it on an oval dish, surrounding the meat with duchess potatoes (No. 2785), laying them in a long square; glaze over with a brush and serve separately a sauce-boat of brown sauce (No. 414), reduced with a part of the stock, Madeira, white wine and chopped up truffles.

← No. 1519 Calf's Head Plain or Vinaigrette Veal No. 1521 Kernel of Veal with Thickened Gravy →

For the Modern Kitchen

A braise-roast of a single prime cut of veal, dressed with piped potato and a Madeira sauce. Nearly all the work is in the butchery and the studding; the oven does the rest.

What the kernel isNoix de veau is the rounded muscle of the veal leg, roughly the top round or cushion. Ask a butcher for a boneless veal top round roast of 3 to 4 lb, tied; the 1894 kitchen was working from a whole leg and cutting the noix out of it.
The udderTetine de veau — calf's udder, poached and used as a rich fat — is effectively unobtainable in the United States and hard to find elsewhere. Its job here was to keep the lean leg meat moist, and a sheet of caul fat or a layer of barding fat does the same thing.
Studding with trufflesCut peeled truffle into batons about 1 inch long, taper one end, and drive them in with the point of a small knife along the grain, spaced evenly across the surface. Fresh black truffle is a considerable expense; preserved whole truffles hold their shape well enough for this and are the practical choice.
Fat porkSliced salt pork or unsmoked pork fatback, tied over the studded face, is the barding meant here. Blanch salt pork briefly first so it does not oversalt the joint, since the meat is already lightly salted.
Oven and timeA moderate oven is usually taken as about 325-350F; Ranhofer's two to three hours suits the large joints of a professional kitchen (he specifies a deep sautoir but never says it is covered). A 3 to 4 lb veal round at 350F, basted, will reach 145-150F internal in roughly 1 1/2 to 2 hours; go by the thermometer, not the clock, or the lean leg meat will be dry and grainy.
The sautoirA sautoir is a shallow straight-sided pan, not a baking dish. Use a heavy braiser or Dutch oven just large enough to hold the joint, so the small quantity of stock and butter does not evaporate away before the meat is done.
The sauces by numberNo. 414 is the brown sauce Ranhofer cross-references here, and No. 194a one of his stocks; the recipe gives no more detail than that. A good veal demi-glace, reduced with the pan juices, Madeira and a little dry white wine, then finished with chopped truffle, gives the same result. No. 2785, duchess potatoes, is riced potato bound with egg yolk and butter, piped and browned.
GlazingThe recipe says only 'glaze over with a brush'; the likeliest reading is reduced stock rather than egg wash — boil the strained pan liquid down until it coats a spoon and paint the meat with it just before serving, for shine.
YieldA 3 to 4 lb kernel with the potato border serves 8, carved across the grain in thin slices so the truffle studding shows as a pattern in each one.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in cross-referenced numbers — hence the strings of digits standing in for sauces and garnishes a professional brigade already had at hand. Noix de veau, the cushion of the leg, was generally reckoned among the choicest roasting cuts of veal in nineteenth-century French practice, and studding it with truffle batons was a display technique: the pattern only reveals itself when the joint is carved. The garnish name à la duchesse refers throughout the period's cookery to the egg-enriched piped potato, and by Ranhofer's day it was already standard rather than novel. The casual instruction to retain the udder is a reminder of how completely the whole calf was used in a kitchen that butchered its own — tétine appears in French charcuterie and larding well into the twentieth century, and has since disappeared from ordinary commerce.