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Loin of Veal, Champeau
Procure a fine piece loin of veal with kidney. Trim off the spine bone as well as the fat, fold up the flap over the kidney, firmly tie with string, place in a braizing pan, with a sliced carrot, a sliced onion, two branches parsley, one branch garlic, one ounce finely sliced salt pork and one tablespoon freshly crushed, whole black pepper; add two tablespoons melted lard. Season with a teaspoon salt and let brown on the fire for ten minutes. Moisten with a pint broth and two gills demi-glace. Boil for five minutes, then set in the oven to braize for one hour and ten minutes, turning and basting it quite frequently meanwhile. Remove, dress on a hot dish, untie, skim the fat from the gravy, then strain the gravy into another saucepan; add to it twelve finely sliced canned mushrooms, reduce it for ten minutes, range a puree of chestnuts at each end of the dish, pour the sauce over the veal and serve.
A classic French braise written for a kitchen with a butcher on call and a stockpot always going. The two things to settle before you start are the cut and the demi-glace.
- The cutA loin of veal with the kidney still attached is a special order; ask for a bone-in loin with kidney and flap, and have the chine (spine) bone removed at the shop. Figure 4-5 lb, serving six to eight.
- Gills and demi-glaceA gill is half a cup, so two gills is one cup of demi-glace against a pint of broth. Bought demi-glace concentrate diluted per the jar works; if you have neither, reduce good veal or brown chicken stock by two-thirds instead and expect a thinner, less glossy sauce.
- Braizing pan and oven heatAny heavy lidded roasting pan or Dutch oven the meat fits snugly in. The book gives no temperature; a moderate oven of around 325F is a reasonable modern reading, but the recipe itself offers no guidance on heat.
- "One branch garlic"Almost certainly one clove, not a whole head. The aromatics here are background, and the crushed peppercorns are the dominant seasoning.
- Doneness over clock timeAn hour and ten minutes suits a loin of this size, but check with a thermometer: 145-150F at the centre leaves the loin rosy and sliceable, and the kidney cooked through. Veal loin is lean and turns dry fast past that point.
- RestingUntie and let it sit ten minutes under foil while you skim and reduce the gravy. The recipe's ten-minute reduction conveniently covers the rest.
- MushroomsCanned mushrooms were a normal pantry item in kitchens of this period. Sliced fresh cremini, sauteed dry in a little butter first to drive off water, give better flavour and will not slacken the sauce.
- Chestnut pureeVacuum-packed or jarred cooked chestnuts simmered in a little stock or milk and blitzed with butter, seasoned with salt and a scrape of nutmeg. Unsweetened only; the sweetened French chestnut cream sold for desserts is the wrong product.
"Champeau" is often taken to be one of the hundreds of garnish names that filled French professional cookery around 1900, when a dish was identified less by its method than by what surrounded it on the platter, though the recipe itself gives no definition of the garnish. Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906) collected these in bulk for American hotel and household cooks, and the structure here is pure escoffier-era brigade practice: brown the joint, moisten with stock and demi-glace, braise, then strain and reduce the braising liquid into the sauce so nothing is wasted. Veal loin with the kidney left in was a prestige cut in that world, and the chestnut puree at either end of the dish marks it as autumn or winter cooking, chestnuts being a standard partner to veal and game in French kitchens.