No. 1542

Rack of Veal a l'Albani

Carre de Veau a l'Albani

Take the covered ribs of a rack of veal, cut the spine out entirely, bone the ribs to within two and a half inches of the spine, and saw them off. Pare the top of the rack, lard it with salt fat pork lardons (No. 2, Fig. 52), then roll the flap over, tie and wrap it in buttered paper; put it in the oven to roast; a little before serving time unwrap the rack, glaze, brown, and dress it, garnishing around with Dauphine potatoes (No. 2783). Serve a cream bechamel sauce separately (No. 411).

← No. 1541 Quarter of Veal, Scotch Style Veal No. 1543 Round Bottom Fricandeau of Veal Glazed with →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a butcher's block, a larding needle and a cook who knows what "a little before serving time" means. The dish is simply a French-trimmed rack of veal, larded, roasted in a paper wrapping, and finished with glaze and a shower of fried potato puffs.

The hinge: the paper wrappingVeal is lean and dries out fast, which is why the rack is larded and then wrapped in buttered paper for most of its roasting. Use buttered parchment, and take it off only for the final glazing and browning, or the meat will be grey and stringy at the edges before the centre is done.
What to ask the butcher for"Covered ribs of a rack of veal" with the spine cut out and the rib bones cleaned and sawn off two and a half inches from the spine is a French-trimmed veal rack with the bones shortened. Any butcher will do this if asked; the flap Ranhofer rolls over is the thin belly-side piece still attached to the rack.
LardingSalt fat pork lardons were pushed through the meat with a larding needle. Salt pork or unsmoked fatback cut into pencil strips is the closest modern equivalent; blanch it briefly if it is heavily cured. If you have no larding needle, bard the top of the rack with a sheet of fatback tied on and remove it for glazing.
Oven and temperatureNo temperature is given; nineteenth-century ranges were not calibrated. Roast at 325 to 350F and cook to an internal temperature of at least 145F at the thickest point, then rest 15 minutes; veal taken to the old "well done" standard is chalky. Timing will depend on the size of the rack and on the paper wrapping, so go by the thermometer rather than by minutes per pound.
Glazing and browningTo glaze here means to brush the surface with reduced veal stock (glace de viande) and return it uncovered to a hot oven or under a broiler for a few minutes until it lacquers. It is not a sugar glaze.
The garnishesDauphine potatoes are duchesse potato mixture folded with choux paste and deep-fried into puffs; No. 411 is Ranhofer's cream bechamel, presumably a bechamel enriched with cream, though that recipe is not printed here. Both are cross-references, so the recipe as printed is only part of the plate.
YieldA veal rack of seven or eight ribs weighs about 5 to 6 lb trimmed and serves six to eight. Carve between the bones.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of his decades of cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and its veal chapter reads like a butcher's catalogue: every cut of the rack, loin and leg is given its own treatment and its own proper name. Dishes in the book are routinely tagged "a l'Albani" or "a la Patti" after the singers, financiers and society figures who ate in the dining rooms, and the Albani here is generally taken to be Emma Albani, the Canadian soprano who was one of the most celebrated opera singers in New York and London in the 1880s and 1890s, though Ranhofer never explains his dedications. The technique is older than the name: larding lean veal with strips of pork fat and roasting it swaddled in buttered paper is standard French practice going back well into the eighteenth century, a workaround for a meat that has almost no fat of its own.