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Rack of Veal, Bretonne
Trim nicely a rack of veal of three pounds and place in a small roasting pan. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Spread two tablespoons melted lard over the veal, pour one-quarter gill cold water into the pan; set in the oven and roast for forty-five minutes, being careful to turn it once in a while, and frequently baste with its own gravy. Remove, dress on a hot dish and garnish with beans Bretonne. Skim the fat off the gravy, strain it over the veal and serve.
A plain roast that depends entirely on the garnish and the pan juices, written for a cook who already knew what oven to use. Two things need filling in: the temperature and the doneness.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. For a 3 lb rack, start at 425F for about 15 minutes to colour the fat, then drop to 350F for the remainder. Forty-five minutes total is realistic only at that kind of heat.
- Doneness is the hingeVeal rack is lean and unforgiving. Pull it at 145F at the centre of the meat, away from bone, and rest it 10 minutes. Roasted past about 155F it turns dry and mealy, and no amount of basting will bring it back.
- A quarter gillA gill is half a cup, so a quarter gill is 2 tablespoons. It is there to keep the drippings from scorching, not to braise the meat; top up with a spoonful more if the pan looks dry.
- LardThe recipe calls for two tablespoons melted lard, a common basting fat in kitchens of this period. Butter will brown too fast at 425F; clarified butter, or a neutral oil, does the same job.
- Basting and turningWith a rack this small, turning it once at the halfway mark is enough. Baste every 10 minutes or so, and use a small pan as directed so the juices pool rather than spread and burn.
- Beans BretonneThe garnish is cooked dried white beans (haricots or cannellini) finished in a sauce of onion, garlic, tomato and a little of the roast's own gravy. Allow about 1 1/2 cups dried beans, soaked and simmered until tender, before saucing.
- The gravyThere will be very little of it. Skim, then loosen the pan with a splash of stock or water over heat and scrape up the browned film before straining; otherwise the best of the flavour stays in the pan.
- YieldA 3 lb rack serves four, or three generously once the bones are accounted for.
"Bretonne" on a menu means Brittany, and in French kitchen shorthand it signals haricot beans, the region's emblematic crop, usually bound with onion, garlic and tomato. The pairing became so fixed that the bean garnish alone is called haricots à la bretonne, and it is associated above all with mutton, though also with veal and lamb roasts. This recipe comes from Alexander Filippini's International Cook Book, written by a cook long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and its terseness is characteristic: the professional reader was expected to know the oven, know the garnish, and need only the weight, the seasoning and the clock. The reliance on a gill measurement and on lard rather than butter for basting places it squarely in the American professional kitchen of the early 1900s.