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Roast Veal
Mrs. D. S. F.
Prepare a leg of veal for the oven, by washing, drying, and larding it with strips of fat bacon or ham, and dredging it well with flour, and seasoning with salt and pepper; baste frequently and serve with the gravy thickened. A roast fillet of veal should be prepared by stuffing it with bread crumbs, seasoned with chopped ham, summer savory, pepper and salt. Dredge lightly with flour and bake.
Two roasts in one entry, both given without an oven temperature or a time, which is normal for a book written when cooks judged a range by hand. Veal is lean and unforgiving, so the numbers matter more here than in a beef recipe.
- The hinge: cook to temperature, not to the clockVeal leg has almost no intramuscular fat and goes dry and stringy quickly. A roast is done at 145F in the thickest part, away from bone, with a 15-minute rest; anything past about 155F is lost.
- Oven heatNothing is specified. A large leg suits a steady 325F throughout, roughly 20-25 minutes per pound. A stuffed fillet can be started hotter to set the surface before dropping to 325F, but note that this recipe flours the fillet as well, and flour scorches at high heat, so watch it closely if you do.
- "Fillet of veal"In this period the fillet is the top of the hind leg cut across, not the tenderloin. A modern butcher will sell it as a boneless top round or leg roast, and it needs to be butterflied or pocketed to take the stuffing.
- LardingThreading strips of fat through the meat with a larding needle is the point of the exercise on a cut this lean. If you have no needle, bard instead: tie sheets of sliced fatback or unsmoked bacon over the surface, and remove them for the last 20 minutes to let the outside color.
- Dredging with flourFlour rubbed onto the wet surface browns and later thickens the pan juices. It will scorch at high heat, so keep the oven moderate once the flour is on, and add liquid to the pan if the drippings start to smoke.
- Summer savoryStill sold dried, though rarely fresh. It is peppery and slightly resinous; about a teaspoon of dried savory per cup of crumbs is enough. Thyme with a little sage is the closest common stand-in.
- Stuffing safetyBread crumbs bound with chopped ham inside a solid roast will sit below the meat's own finished temperature. Pack it loosely and check the center of the stuffing reaches 165F, or bake it alongside in a dish.
- Basting and the gravyFrequent basting made more sense in the dry heat of a period oven; in a modern one it mostly means heat loss from opening the door. Baste two or three times at most. For the gravy, pour off the fat, whisk the floury fond with stock or the veal's own juices, and simmer three or four minutes to cook out the raw flour.
- YieldA whole leg of veal is a banquet joint of 10 lb or more and will serve 15 to 20. A 4 lb boneless leg roast, stuffed, serves eight and is the practical version of this recipe.
Veal appears in community cookbooks like this one alongside the other "company" roasts. The instruction to lard the leg with bacon or ham reflects a practical constraint: milk-fed veal carries so little fat of its own that cooks had to add someone else's, a technique widespread in the period. Summer savory, called for in the fillet stuffing, was a standard North American kitchen-garden herb of the era, generally paired with beans, poultry and veal; its retreat from the modern spice rack in favor of thyme and sage is one of the clearer signs of age in a recipe like this. The attribution to "Mrs. D. S. F." is characteristic of the subscription cookbooks compiled by church and charitable groups, where contributors were credited by initials.