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Roast Veal
(Italian method.) Bone, stuff, and tie a nice loin of veal, put it in a pan with 2 ounces of butter, 1/2 cup of water, and salt and pepper, then roast it 2 hours, basting often. Drain it, dip it in half a cup of white stock mixed with the yolk of an egg and some parsley. Dust it thickly with bread-crumbs and grated cheese, and bake it or brown it with a salamander. Serve with a border of potato croquettes.
The original assumes a boned loin, a hot hearth oven and a cook who knows what a salamander is. Two details need attention before anything else: no oven temperature is given, and the roast is cooked twice — once as a roast, once as a gratin.
- Oven temperatureNone is stated. A stuffed, boned veal loin would suit a steady moderate oven, in modern terms roughly 325-350F, for the long roast. The recipe offers a choice for the finish — "bake it or brown it with a salamander" — and the crumbed surface colours best under fierce top heat or in a hotter oven than the roast itself needed.
- Two hours is a guide, not a ruleTwo hours suits a boned and rolled loin of roughly 4-5 lb. Veal is lean and turns dry and grainy well before it looks overdone, so work to an internal temperature of about 145F in the meat, then rest it. The crumb-and-cheese browning adds heat, so pull it a little short of the mark.
- StuffingThe recipe names no stuffing at all. Bread-crumb and herb mixtures, sometimes with cheese, ham, spinach or egg to bind, are the sort of thing that would serve, though the book gives no indication which. Whatever goes in must reach 165F, which is another reason to check with a thermometer rather than the clock.
- SalamanderAn iron plate on a handle, heated red in the fire and held over the dish to brown the top. An overhead broiler at its highest setting does the same job; a kitchen torch works for a small surface. The point is fierce top heat that colours the crust without cooking the meat further.
- White stockAn unclarified light stock from veal bones or chicken, unbrowned. Any good unsalted chicken stock stands in. Mixed with a raw yolk it becomes a thin glue that holds the crumbs — it must be lukewarm, not hot, or the yolk will scramble.
- Grated cheeseUnspecified; a hard dry grating cheese such as Parmesan or a pecorino is the likely intention. It is mixed with the crumbs, with the crumbs in the majority so the cheese does not scorch before the crust sets.
- Basting and the panHalf a cup of water with 2 oz butter will cook away long before two hours are up. Check at intervals and add a splash more so the pan juices reduce rather than burn — those juices are the sauce, once the fat is skimmed.
- ServingA "border of potato croquettes" means the roast set in the centre of a platter with the croquettes ringing it, a common service arrangement of the period. At the size guessed above it would serve perhaps 6 to 8.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea belongs to a small genre of turn-of-the-century American books that collected dishes gathered abroad and presented them, translated and simplified, for the home kitchen. This roast is a fair specimen of what "Italian method" meant to such books: not a regional dish with a name of its own, but a familiar cut treated in a manner thought to be characteristically Italian, which here means boned and stuffed arrosto-style and finished with grated cheese. Veal held a particular place in Italian cooking that it never quite had in Anglo-American kitchens, where beef and mutton dominated the roasting spit. The double treatment — roast, then coated and browned again — reflects the ornamental service of the era, when a plain joint arriving at table was thought unfinished.