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Breast of Veal, Marseillaise
Procure a fresh breast of veal of three pounds. Cut into twelve equal pieces. Heat two tablespoons lard in a black frying pan. Arrange veal in pan and brown for six minutes on each side. Transfer into a saucepan, without the fat; add one carrot cut in half and finely sliced. a medium onion and one branch celery cut the same way, and one tablespoon butter. Season with a teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper; lightly mix; cover pan and set on side of range to sweat for ten minutes. Add one tablespoon flour, stir well, pour in one gill hot water, half a gill claret and one gill tomato sauce. Cover pan, boil for five minutes, then set in oven for thirty-five minutes. Prepare a smooth hash, with two branches well-cleaned parsley, two branches chervil, four branches chives and one clove garlic, then add half of this hash to the pan, mix a little and keep hot. Cut two fresh, peeled, red tomatoes into three slices each. Season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper; turn over the tomatoes in the remaining herb hash, then lightly roll in flour. Heat a tablespoon melted lard in a frying pan, place in the tomatoes and fry for two minutes on each side. Dress the pieces of veal in centre of a large dish, pour over the sauce, arrange the tomatoes around and serve.
A straightforward braise dressed up with a raw herb hash and fried tomatoes. The measurements are Edwardian professional shorthand, and the braising time is the one number worth arguing with.
- Gill and saltspoonA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz), so the braising liquid is 1/2 cup hot water, 1/4 cup claret and 1/2 cup tomato sauce. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, making "two saltspoons white pepper" a half teaspoon.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the book assumes a range oven. Treat it as a moderate oven, 325-350F, covered, so the liquid barely trembles rather than boils.
- The braise needs longerBreast of veal is a bone-in, connective-tissue cut. Thirty-five minutes will cook it through but leave it chewy; 1.5 to 2 hours covered at 325F is what actually renders the collagen and gives the sauce body. Check that a piece pulls easily from the bone.
- Liquid levelA total of about 1.25 cups will not cover three pounds of veal, which is consistent with a tight covered pan on a short braise. If you extend the time as above, add water or light stock to come halfway up the meat and check it partway through.
- ClaretIn an American book of this period claret means dry red Bordeaux or anything in that style. A dry, unoaked red does the job; the quantity is small and mostly there for acidity.
- Tomato sauceNot the modern jarred pasta sauce. This means the stock-based tomato sauce of the professional kitchen; passata cooked down with a little stock, or plain canned tomato puree loosened with broth, is closer to the intent.
- Black frying pan and lardA black pan means cast iron or blackened wrought iron, chosen for the hard sear. Lard gives the cleanest browning, but any high-smoke-point fat works. The instruction to transfer the veal "without the fat" matters: the rendered browning fat is discarded, and the fresh tablespoon of butter carries the vegetables.
- Sweating on the side of the rangeThe cool edge of a coal range is roughly the lowest setting on a burner. The vegetables should soften and give up moisture without taking colour.
- The herb hashHalf goes into the pan at the end, off the boil, so it stays green; the rest coats the tomato slices. Chervil is the one hard-to-find item; a little tarragon plus extra parsley approximates its anise note. Chop everything fine, garlic included.
- YieldTwelve pieces from a three-pound breast serves four generously, or six as part of a longer meal.
The breast is the cheap end of the calf, and dishes built on it are a fair index of a cookbook's ambitions: this one takes an economical cut and treats it with the full apparatus of the professional kitchen, browning, sweating, singeing with flour, a wine-and-tomato braise. The label "Marseillaise" in turn-of-the-century menu French signals the Provencal south rather than any single Marseille recipe, and it is doing so here through garlic, tomato and fresh herbs; garnishes so named are generally traced to that shorthand rather than to a documented regional dish. The uncooked herb hash of parsley, chervil, chives and garlic, added at the last moment and again on the tomatoes, is the classic French device for putting a fresh top note on a long-cooked brown sauce, and it is what separates this from a plain veal stew.