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Noix of Veal, Braisee, Fermiere
Procure a three-pound piece of the round part of veal. Heat in a saucepan three tablespoons good melted lard, add the veal and cook it for five minutes on each side, or until a nice golden colour. Take up the veal and keep on a plate. Add three tablespoons flour to the pan, briskly stir with a wooden spoon; then pour in one gill claret, half pint white broth, one and a half gills tomato sauce and one and a half gills demi-glace; then place the veal in. Season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper, and as soon as it begins to boil, add two carrots cut into half-inch squares. Tie up in a bunch two branches celery, two leeks, three branches parsley, two cloves, one sprig bay leaf and add it to the pan with one sound bean garlic. Cover the pan and set in a hot oven for one hour. Remove it from the oven, dress the veal on a hot dish, remove the bunch of herbs and garlic. Arrange the carrots on one side of the dish and a half pint can hot green peas on the other side. Reduce the gravy to half the quantity on the fire, skim the fat from the surface, then strain it over the veal and send to the table.
A classic French braise written for a professional kitchen that already had stock, tomato sauce and demi-glace standing by. Translating those three sauces is most of the work; the rest is straightforward.
- The cutNoix is French for "nut" — the cushion or topside muscle from the inside of the veal leg, a solid boneless piece that slices cleanly. Ask a butcher for a 3 lb veal top round roast, tied. Veal rump or a boneless shoulder roast will braise as well, though it carves less neatly.
- Gills and half pintsA gill is half a cup, so one gill claret is 4 fl oz, and one and a half gills of tomato sauce or demi-glace is 6 fl oz each. Half a pint of broth is one cup. Claret means dry red Bordeaux or any dry red.
- Demi-glace and white brothDemi-glace here is reduced brown veal stock; a good store-bought concentrate diluted to 6 oz does the job. "White broth" is unsalted light veal or chicken stock. Because commercial stocks and concentrates carry salt, hold back on the teaspoon of salt until you taste the reduced gravy at the end.
- Oven heatThe book gives no temperatures; a "hot oven" in cookery of this period is usually read as somewhere around 400-450F. That is fine for the first stretch, but a covered 3 lb veal round is likely to want 325-350F for one and a half to two hours to come genuinely fork-tender; one hour at high heat may leave the centre tight. Judge it by a fork sliding out without resistance, not by the clock.
- The fat and the rouxThree tablespoons lard gives the best colour, but clarified butter or a neutral oil works. Three tablespoons flour into that fat is a fair amount of roux — stir it a minute or two until it smells nutty before the liquid goes in, or the gravy will taste pasty.
- The bouquet"One sprig bay leaf" means a single bay leaf, and "one sound bean garlic" is one unblemished whole clove, unpeeled. Bind the celery, leeks, parsley, cloves and bay with kitchen string so the whole bundle lifts out in one motion.
- PeasCanned green peas were a common garnish in kitchens of this period. A cup of frozen peas, dropped in boiling salted water for two minutes and drained, is closer to what the dish is reaching for.
- Finishing the gravyReducing by half after the meat comes out is the step that makes the plate. Skim the fat, taste for salt at that point, and strain over the sliced veal. Serves six.
The International Cook Book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its French entries read like restaurant service notes rather than home instructions — hence the casual call for demi-glace and tomato sauce as if both were simmering nearby. Fermière, commonly glossed as "farmer's wife style," is one of the old classical garnish names, and it generally signals root vegetables cut in dice or squares: carrots, celery, leeks, sometimes turnip. Such second names were intended to tell a trained cook what would be on the plate, so little further description was given.