No. 1538

Neck of Veal au Blanc

Cou de Veau au Blanc

Have three pounds of the neck of veal, without sinews, cut in pieces three inches long by one and a quarter wide, parboil, drain, then throw them into cold water; when cool, drain again and pare them into equal sized pieces. Put a quarter of a pound of butter into a saucepan with a quarter of a pound of unsmoked bacon; let this fry lightly, then add the veal and fry together to a fine color; besprinkle with four spoonfuls of flour, and brown it slightly with the meat, then moisten with stock (No. 194a), season with salt, whole peppers, a garnished bunch of parsley with thyme and bay leaf and two cloves; cook for two hours before adding sixty small onions, and continue the cooking until both the onions and meat are done; now transfer the onions and meat into another saucepan with about thirty medium-sized cooked mushrooms. Skim the fat from the sauce; reduce and season it properly, thicken it with three egg-yolks diluted in a little cream, and finish with fresh butter and lemon juice; strain through a tammy, pour it over the meat, kept warm in a bain-marie until needed. Dress the meat, with the onions and mushrooms around and pour the sauce over the whole.

← No. 1537 Loin of Veal with Gravy Veal No. 1539 Veal Palates a la Sevigne →

For the Modern Kitchen

A veal fricassée in all but name, built on the classic garnish of glazed baby onions and mushrooms. The liaison at the end is the part that will fail if rushed.

The egg yolks are the hingeOnce the three yolks and cream go into the reduced sauce, keep it below a simmer — roughly 175-180F. A boil after the liaison scrambles the yolks and the sauce turns grainy past saving. Off the heat, whisk a ladle of hot sauce into the yolks first, then return the lot to low heat and stir until it coats a spoon.
"Au blanc" and the browningThe name means a white ragout, yet the text says to fry the veal to a fine color and brown the flour slightly. The colouring called for is presumably light rather than a proper brown; keep the butter foaming rather than sizzling hard and pull the meat while it is still pale. Over-coloured flour will give a darker sauce than the name implies.
Stock No. 194aThat cross-reference is to one of his stocks. A good unsalted chicken or veal stock stands in; avoid anything dark or heavily reduced, which will fight the finish. The recipe gives no quantity, so use enough to cover the meat.
Unsmoked baconHe means unsmoked salt pork or fresh pork belly — smoke would dominate a white sauce. Pancetta or a piece of unsmoked green bacon works; ordinary American smoked bacon does not.
Spoonfuls and quantitiesRanhofer's "spoonful" is generally a tablespoon, so four spoonfuls of flour is about four tablespoons — less flour than butter, so the sauce leans on the reduction and the yolks as much as on the roux. Sixty small onions means pearl or cipollini onions, roughly a pound and a half; the thirty mushrooms he calls medium-sized run to about a pound, cooked separately in butter with lemon so they stay pale.
TimingsTwo hours before the onions go in is long by modern standards. Check the meat at 75 minutes and add the onions when the veal is nearly done — pearl onions need 25 to 35 minutes and collapse into mush if given two hours.
The parboilBlanching the neck and shocking it in cold water is not fussiness: it firms the meat so it can be pared to even pieces, and it draws off the scum that would cloud a white sauce. Skip it and you will be skimming all afternoon.
TammyA tammy is a fine woven cloth used to force sauce through. A fine-mesh conical strainer, or a chinois with a ladle pressed against it, does the same job.
YieldThree pounds of neck feeds about six as a main course with rice or plain boiled potatoes.

A Little History

This is No. 1538 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York. In the French kitchen of his training, veal ragouts divided into au brun and au blanc, the latter finished with a yolk-and-cream liaison rather than a browned sauce — the same family as the blanquette de veau, which was already a bourgeois standard by the mid-nineteenth century. The garnish of small onions and button mushrooms is the classic garniture à l'ancienne, and the choice of neck rather than a costly loin shows the practical side of a great restaurant kitchen: a gelatinous, well-worked cut that rewards slow cooking and, once masked in a pale sauce, arrives at the table looking as fine as anything from the saddle.