No. 1536

Loin of Veal a la Saintonge

Longe de Veau a la Saintonge

Procure a good loin of veal; remove the fat, also the kidneys, taking a part of their fat away; break the spine bone at the joints, and put the kidneys back near the ribs; cover over with the flap; pare the meat into an oblong-shape nearly the same dimensions throughout, tie and roast it in the oven, not having it too hot after placing some good fat on top; leave it in for two hours, then salt, glaze and brown to a fine color. Dress the meat garnishing around with green peas Parisian style (No. 2745), and the ends with cork-shaped turnips, blanched and cooked in beef broth (No. 194a) with a little sugar and butter, sufficiently moistened that when they are cooked they have fallen to a glaze. Serve a separate sauce-boat of a buttered veloute sauce (No. 415), seasoned with nutmeg.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a rognonnade — a veal loin roasted with its own kidneys rolled inside — dressed with two glazed vegetable garnishes and a sauce served apart. The bones and the kidney are the whole point, so the butcher order matters more than anything you do at the stove.

What to orderAsk for a bone-in veal loin with the kidney and flap (the thin belly extension) still attached, chine cracked at each joint. This is a special order at most counters. A boneless loin will roast, but you lose the rib cage that keeps the kidney from drying and the bones that make the glaze.
"Not having it too hot"The book gives no temperature; a moderate oven, somewhere around 325F, is a reasonable modern reading. Veal loin is lean and the kidney inside is leaner still, and a very hot oven held for two hours will grey the meat through. Starting hotter to set the fat cap and then dropping to a moderate oven is one way to work, though the recipe does not describe it.
Two hours is for a large jointThe two-hour figure implies a whole loin rather than a trimmed piece, though the book never gives a weight. Go by a thermometer in the thickest part of the eye, away from the kidney: 145F and a fifteen-minute rest. A small trimmed loin will get there considerably sooner.
The fat on top"some good fat" is most simply read as a sheet of pork caul or a barding of fatback tied over the meat, since the loin has been trimmed of its own fat at the start. Remove the barding for the last stretch so the surface can brown, as the recipe's final browning requires.
Salting at the endThe recipe salts only after the two hours are up. The usual explanation offered for late salting is that early salt was thought to draw out juices, though the book gives no reason. Salting the exterior ahead of time is common now and seasons the meat rather than just the crust; either way, season the interior surfaces before you roll and tie.
GlazeGlacer here means brushing with reduced veal or beef stock — meat glaze thick enough to coat a spoon — and returning the joint to a hot oven briefly to lacquer it. Pan drippings reduced hard will do.
Cork-shaped turnipsTurned turnips, cut to uniform cylinders roughly the size of a cork, as the name suggests. Blanch them, then cook in beef broth with a knob of butter and a pinch of sugar in a wide pan, uncovered, until the liquid reduces to a syrup that coats them, which is what the recipe means by having "fallen to a glaze." If they are tender before the liquid has gone, lift them out and reduce the broth separately.
The cross-referencesNo. 194a is beef broth, as the recipe states. No. 2745 is the book's green peas Parisian style and No. 415 its velouté; the details of both are in the original and are not given here. The recipe itself tells you to butter the velouté and season it with nutmeg. Neither reference is strictly needed: a good velouté and buttered peas serve the dish.
YieldThe book gives no number of servings, but a whole loin dressed this way is a centrepiece for a sizeable table. Carve down through the eye in thick slices, giving each portion a share of kidney.

A Little History

Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially the house repertory written down — several thousand numbered preparations, each pointing at others, in the manner of a professional reference rather than a domestic cookbook. Saintonge is an old province on France's Atlantic coast north of Bordeaux, and garnish names of this kind often say more about a chef's taste for geography than about any regional dish; the peas, glazed turnips and nutmeg-scented velouté here are standard restaurant work of the period. What is genuinely traditional is the construction: a loin roasted with its kidney rolled in the flap is the rognonnade de veau, a butcher's cut of long standing in France and still sold under that name. Veal carried a prestige in this period that it has largely lost in the English-speaking world — pale, mild and expensive, it was the meat of the formal menu, and a loin dressed at both ends with two separate glazed garnishes suggests a joint meant to be seen whole before carving.