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Fricandeau of Veal, Bourgeoise
Have a three-pound piece round of veal, sawed from a leg. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Thoroughly heat two tablespoons leaf lard in a saucepan, place the veal in the pan and briskly cook for ten minutes on each side. Remove it from the pan and keep warm. Add to the gravy two tablespoons flour; stir well, then add a gill claret, one pint hot broth or water, one gill tomato sauce half gill demi-glace; mix well, and as soon as it comes to a boil add the veal again.
With a Parisian potato scoop, dig out as many pieces as possible from two medium-sized, peeled carrots and two medium-sized turnips and add them to the pan. Tie up in a bunch two leeks, two branches celery, two branches parsley, one sprig bay leaf and one sprig thyme, and add to the pan; cover the pan, then place in a hot oven for twenty-five minutes. Add six very small, peeled white onions and six sliced mushrooms. Cover the pan and put back in the oven for fifty minutes longer. Remove, place the veal on a hot dish, removing the bunch of vegetables. Arrange all the vegetables from the pan around the veal, pour the contents of the pan over the fricandeau, sprinkle a teaspoon chopped parsley over all and serve.
A straightforward braise dressed in Escoffier-era vocabulary. Most of what needs translating is measurement and equipment, plus one oven temperature worth reconsidering.
- The cutA three-pound piece "sawed from a leg" is a solid slab of veal round — top round or the eye of round, cut thick rather than into cutlets. Ask a butcher for a single boneless piece from the leg; a shoulder clod will braise just as well and costs less.
- GillA gill is half a cup. So: 1/2 cup claret, 1/2 cup tomato sauce, 1/4 cup demi-glace, plus a pint (2 cups) of hot broth.
- ClaretPeriod shorthand for red Bordeaux, or anything sold as such. A dry, unoaked red is what the sauce wants; the half cup is there for acid and colour, not sweetness.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock thickened with espagnole — a professional kitchen staple in 1900, and the reason this sauce sets with gloss. Good jarred demi-glace or a couple of tablespoons of heavily reduced brown stock will do the same job.
- Leaf lardRendered fat from around the pig's kidneys, mild and clean-tasting. Ordinary lard, clarified butter or a neutral oil all work for the initial browning.
- Parisian potato scoopA melon baller. Cut carrot and turnip into small spheres so they cook evenly and look deliberate; the trimmings can go into the pan and be strained out later, or into stock.
- "A hot oven"Period sources put this somewhere in the region of 400-450F, though the term was never standardised, and it is hotter than a covered braise needs. At that heat the liquid boils rather than trembles and lean veal round tightens. 325F for the same total time — the recipe's 25 plus 50 minutes, about 75 — gives a better texture; the meat is done when a fork slides in with no resistance, which on a thick piece may take longer.
- Ten minutes a sideThat is for colour on a thick piece, not for cooking it through. Do not let the fat smoke, or the flour added afterward will taste scorched.
- YieldThree pounds of boneless veal with its vegetables serves six. Carve across the grain in thick slices and spoon the sauce and vegetables over each portion.
Fricandeau is an old French term for a thick slice of veal from the leg, traditionally larded with strips of pork fat threaded through the surface and then braised and glazed until the top shines. The lardoons have quietly disappeared here, but the shape of the dish survives. "Bourgeoise" is the standard menu signal for the garnish rather than a place or a family: carrots, turnips, glazed baby onions and a bouquet garni, the plain vegetables of a middle-class household treated with care and turned into neat spheres. The recipe sits in The International Cook Book as an example of home-scale French cooking, though the call for demi-glace gives away its restaurant lineage, shared with the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, where a tub of reduced brown sauce was always to hand.