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Shoulder of Veal Stuffed and Braised
Take a large stale loaf of baker's bread, trim off all the crust and rub the crumbs as fine as possible with the hands. Soak the crust in a bowl of cold water for fifteen minutes, then drain, squeeze out as much of the water as possible, rub fine and add to the crumbed bread. Put through the chopper sufficient suet to measure a good half cupful. Chop two onions quite fine, place in a frying pan, with one tablespoonful of the chopped suet and fry until lightly colored. To the bread add a high seasoning of salt, pepper and dried thyme, then mix with it the suet and onions. A couple of tablespoonfuls of sausage meat makes a good addition, although not absolutely necessary. Have the butcher bone the piece of meat. With the bones make a pint or more of meat stock. Stuff the meat with the mixture and fasten the ends with one or two stitches of thin twine. In the braising-pan put a layer each of very thin sliced onions, and carrots and on it arrange the meat. Drop in one corner of the pan a bouquet made with a few sprigs of parsley, a stalk of celery, a bay leaf and two cloves. Heat the stock and pour it around the meat. Cover closely and braise in a moderate oven for three hours. Prepared in this way the meat will be juicy and well flavored instead of being dry and tasteless, as is too often the case with roast veal.
A straightforward braise once you translate the butchery and the bread. The instructions are sound; the only real work is sourcing the shoulder and the suet.
- Oven temperature"A moderate oven" here means 325-350F. At that heat a covered pan will hold a gentle simmer for the full three hours without reducing the stock to glaze.
- The meatThe recipe does not give a weight; a boned veal shoulder of roughly 4-5 lb suits the quantities, and will need ordering from a butcher. Ask for the bones as well, since the recipe makes the stock from them; if they are unavailable, use a light chicken or veal stock rather than water.
- Stale loaf, in modern termsA baker's loaf of the period might run anywhere from about a pound upward. Crust and crumb together will give several cups of loose crumbs, a generous amount of stuffing for a shoulder of this kind. The soaked, squeezed, re-crumbled crust is what keeps the mixture moist rather than sandy.
- SuetA half cup of chopped beef suet is still sold by some butchers and by mail order. Cold unsalted butter, coarsely grated, is a common substitute; it melts sooner and the stuffing will be a little softer.
- Braising-panAny heavy lidded pot that holds the meat snugly: a Dutch oven or a roasting pan sealed with foil under its lid. The seal matters more than the vessel, since the whole point is that the veal steams in its own vapour.
- How much liquidThe recipe calls for a pint or more, poured around rather than over the meat. The stuffed shoulder should sit on the onion and carrot with the liquid partway up it, so the underside stews while the rest cooks in the steam of the closed pan.
- DonenessVeal shoulder is a working muscle and needs to go well past the point where it would be pink so that the connective tissue softens; expect an internal temperature of 170F or above. The recipe's three hours should get a shoulder of this size there, but check with a thermometer rather than the clock.
- The bouquetParsley, celery, bay and two cloves, tied with kitchen twine or bundled in cheesecloth so the cloves can be fished out whole. Remove it before serving.
- Finishing and yieldStrain the braising liquid, skim the fat and reduce it briefly for a sauce; the vegetables have given everything they have and can be discarded. The sliced meat holds its stuffing better after ten minutes' rest.
The closing sentence is the argument of the whole recipe: veal shoulder, being lean and full of connective tissue, dries out under the dry heat of roasting, and braising was the remedy the recipe offers. The technique came into American cookbooks from French practice, where braiser described slow cooking in a closely covered pot on a bed of aromatics. The bread stuffing, by contrast, is thoroughly Anglo-American: stale loaf, suet, onion, thyme, with sausage meat as an optional enrichment, much the same mixture that went into poultry. Little is wasted: the crust is soaked and reincorporated rather than thrown out, and the bones the butcher removes come home to make the stock the meat is cooked in.