Chapter 78

VEAL. In purchasing this article, the following things should be observed. The flesh of a bull calf is the firmest, but not so white. The fillet of the cow calf is generally preferred for the udder. The whitest meat is not the most juicy, having been made so by frequent bleeding, and giving the calf some whiting to lick. Choose that meat which has the kidney well covered with fat, thick and white. If the bloody vein in the shoulder look blue, or of a bright red, it is newly killed; but any other colour shows it stale. The other parts should be dry and white: if clammy or spotted, the meat is stale and bad. The kidney turns first in the loin, and the suet will not then be firm. This should carefully be attended to, if the joint is to be kept a little time. The first part that turns bad in a leg of veal, is where the udder is skewered back: of course the skewer should be taken out, and both that and the part under it wiped every day. It will then keep good three or four days in hot weather. Take care also to cut out the pipe that runs along the chine of a loin of veal, the same as in beef, to hinder it from tainting. The skirt of the breast of veal is likewise to be taken off, and the inside of the breast wiped and scraped, and sprinkled with a little salt.

VEAL BLANQUETS. Cut thin slices off a fillet of veal roasted. Put some butter into a stewpan, with an onion chopped small; fry them till they begin to brown, then dust in some flour, and add some gravy, and a faggot of sweet herbs, seasoned with pepper, salt, and mace; let this simmer till you have the flavour of the herbs, then put in your veal; beat up the yolks of two eggs in a little cream, and grated nutmeg, some chopped parsley, and a little lemon peel shred fine. Keep it stirring one way till it is smooth, and of a good thickness: squeeze in a little juice of orange, and dish it up. Garnish with orange and barberries.

VEAL BROTH. To make a very nourishing veal broth, take off the knuckle of a leg or shoulder of veal, with very little meat to it, and put it into a stewpot, with three quarts of water. Add an old fowl, four shank-bones of mutton extremely well soaked and bruised, three blades of mace, ten peppercorns, an onion, and a large slice of bread. Cover it close, boil it up once, and skim it carefully. Simmer it four hours as slowly as possible, strain and take off the fat, and flavour it with a little salt.--Another way. Take a scrag of veal, of about three pounds; put it into a clean saucepan, with a tea-spoonful of salt; when it boils, scum it clean; put in a spoonful of ground rice, some mace, a faggot of herbs, and let it boil gently for near two hours, or till you have about two quarts: send it to table with your veal in the middle, toasted bread, and parsley and butter in a boat.

VEAL A LA CREME. Take the best end of a loin of veal, joint it, and cut a little of the suet from the kidney. Make it lie flat, then cut a place in the middle of the upper part about three inches deep and six inches long, take the piece out and chop it, add a little beef suet or beef marrow, parsley, thyme, green truffles, mushrooms, shalots, lemon peel chopped fine, and season it with pepper, salt, and a little beaten allspice. Put all together into a marble mortar, add the yolks of two eggs, and a little French bread soaked in cream. Pound the ingredients well, fill the cavity with the forcemeat, and cover it with a piece of veal caul. Then tie it down close, cover the whole with a large piece of caul, and roast it gently. When to be served up, take off the large caul, let it colour a little, glaze it lightly, and put under it a white sauce. A fillet of veal may be done in the same way, instead of using plain stuffing for it.

VEAL CAKE. Boil six or eight eggs hard; cut the yolks in two, and lay some of the pieces in the bottom of the pot. Shake in a little chopped parsley, some slices of veal and ham, and then eggs again; shaking in after each, some chopped parsley, with pepper and salt, till the pot is full. Then put in water enough to cover it, and lay on it about an ounce of butter: tie it over with a double paper, and bake it about an hour. Then press it close together with a spoon, and let it stand till cold. The cake may be put into a small mould, and then it will turn out beautifully for a supper or side dish.

VEAL COLLOPS. Cut long thin collops, beat them well, and lay on them a bit of thin bacon of the same size. Spread forcemeat over, seasoned high, and also a little garlic and cayenne. Roll them up tight, about the size of two fingers, but not more than two or three inches long. Fasten each firmly with a small skewer, smear them over with egg, fry them of a fine brown, and pour a rich brown gravy over.--To dress collops quickly in another way, cut them as thin as paper, and in small bits, with a very sharp knife. Throw the skin and any odd bits of veal into a little water, with a dust of pepper and salt. Set them on the fire while the collops are preparing and beating, and dip them into a seasoning of herbs, bread, pepper, salt, and a scrape of nutmeg, having first wetted them with egg. Then put a bit of butter into a fryingpan, and give the collops a very quick fry; for as they are so thin, two minutes will do them on both sides. Put them into a hot dish before the fire, strain and thicken the gravy, give it a boil in the fryingpan, and pour it over the collops. The addition of a little ketchup will be an improvement.--Another way is to fry the collops in butter, seasoned only with salt and pepper. Then simmer them in gravy, either white or brown, with bits of bacon served with them. If white, add lemon peel and mace, and a little cream.

VEAL CUTLETS. Cut the veal into thin slices, dip them in the yolks of egg, strew them over with grated bread and nutmeg, sweet herbs and parsley, and lemon peel minced fine, and fry them with butter. When the meat is done, lay it on a dish before the fire. Put a little water into the pan, stir it round and let it boil; add a little butter rolled in flour, and a little lemon juice, and pour it over the cutlets. Or fry them without the bread and herbs, boil a little flour and water in the pan with a sprig of thyme, and pour it on the cutlets, but take out the thyme before the dish is sent to table.

VEAL GRAVY. Make it as for cullis; but leave out the spices, herbs, and flour. It should be drawn very slowly; and if for white dishes, the meat should not be browned.

VEAL LARDED. Take off the under bone of a neck of veal, and leave only a part of the long bones on. Trim it neatly, lard and roast it gently with a veal caul over it. Ten minutes before it is done, take off the caul, and let the veal be of a very light colour. When it is to be served up, put under it some sorrel sauce, celery heads, or asparagus tops, or serve it with mushroom sauce.

VEAL OLIVES. Cut some long thin collops, beat them, lay them on thin slices of fat bacon, and over these a layer of forcemeat highly seasoned, with some shred shalot and cayenne. Roll them tight, about the size of two fingers, but not more than two or three inches long. Fasten them round with a small skewer, rub egg over them, and fry them of a light brown. Serve with brown gravy, in which boil some mushrooms pickled or fresh, and garnish with fried balls.

VEAL OLIVE PIE. Having prepared the veal olives, lay them round and round the dish, making them highest in the middle. Fill it nearly up with water, and cover it with paste. When baked, mix some gravy, cream, and flour, and pour it hot into the pie.

VEAL PATTIES. Mince some veal that is not quite done, with a little parsley, lemon peel, a dust of salt and nutmeg. Add a spoonful of cream, gravy sufficient to moisten the meat, and a little scraped ham. This mixture is not to be warmed till the patties are baked.

VEAL PIE. Take some of the middle or scrag of a small neck, and season it, adding or not a few slices of lean bacon or ham. If wanted of a high relish, add mace, cayenne, and nutmeg, to the salt and pepper; also forcemeat, and eggs. To these likewise may be added, truffles, morels, mushrooms, sweetbreads cut into small bits, and cocks' combs blanched, if approved. It will be very good without any of the latter additions, but a rich gravy must be prepared, and poured in after baking.--To make a rich veal pie, cut steaks from a neck or breast of veal, season them with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and a very little clove in powder. Slice two sweetbreads, and season them in the same manner. Lay a puff paste on the ledge of the dish, put in the meat, yolks of hard eggs, the sweetbreads, and some oysters, up to the top of the dish. Lay over the whole some very thin slices of ham, and fill up the dish with water. Cover it with a crust, and when taken out of the oven, pour in at the top, through a funnel, a few spoonfuls of good veal gravy, and fill it up with cream; but first boil and thicken it with a tea-spoonful of flour.

VEAL AND PARSLEY PIE. Cut some slices from a leg or neck of veal; if the leg, from about the knuckle. Season them with salt, scald some pickled parsley, and squeeze it dry. Cut the parsley a little, and lay it at the bottom of the dish; then put in the meat, and so on, in layers. Fill up the dish with new milk, but not so high as to touch the crust. When baked, pour out a little of the milk, and put in half a pint of good scalded cream. Chicken may be cut up, skinned, and dressed in the same way.

VEAL PORCUPINE. Bone a fine large breast of veal, and rub it over with the yolks of two eggs. Spread it out, and lay on it a few slices of bacon, cut as thin as possible. Add a handful of parsley shred fine, the yolks of five eggs, boiled hard and chopped, and a little lemon peel finely shred. Steep the crumb of a penny loaf in cream, and add to it, seasoning the whole together with salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Roll the veal close, and skewer it up. Cut some fat bacon, the lean of boiled ham, and pickled cucumbers, about two inches long. Place these in rows upon the veal, first the ham, then the bacon, and last the cucumbers, till the whole is larded. Put the meat into a deep earthen pan with a pint of water, cover it close, and set it in a slow oven for two hours. Skim off the fat afterwards, and strain the gravy through a sieve into a stewpan. Add a glass of white wine, a little lemon pickle and caper liquor, and a spoonful of mushroom ketchup, and thicken the gravy with a bit of butter rolled in flour. Lay the porcupine on a dish, and pour the sauce over it. Have ready prepared a thin forcemeat, made of the crumb of a penny loaf, half a pound of beef suet shred fine, the yolks of four eggs, and a few oysters chopped. Mix these together, season the forcemeat with cayenne, salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and spread it on the veal caul. Having rolled the whole up tight, like collared eel, bind it in a cloth, and boil it an hour. When done enough, cut it into four slices, laying one at each end, and the others on the sides of the dish. Have the sweetbreads ready prepared, cut in slices and fried, and lay them round the dish, with a few mushrooms pickled. This is allowed to make a fine bottom dish, when game is not to be had.

VEAL ROLLS. Cut thin slices of either fresh or cold veal, spread on them a fine seasoning of a very few crumbs, a little chopped bacon or scraped ham, and a little suet, parsley, and shalot. Or instead of the parsley and shalot, some fresh mushrooms stewed and minced. Then add pepper and salt, and a small piece of pounded mace. This stuffing may either fill up the roll like a sausage, or be rolled with the meat. In either case tie it up very tight, and stew very slowly in good gravy, and a glass of sherry. Skim it very carefully, and serve it up quite tender.--Another way. Take slices of veal, enough to make a side dish; lay them on your dresser, and lay forcemeat upon each slice; roll them up, and tie them round with coarse thread. Rub them over with the yolk of an egg, spit them on a bird spit, and roast them of a fine brown. For sauce, have good gravy, with morels, truffles, and mushrooms, tossed up to a proper thickness. Lay your rolls in your dish, and pour your sauce over. Garnish with lemon.

VEAL SAUSAGES. Chop equal quantities of lean veal and fat bacon, a handful of sage, a little salt and pepper, and a few anchovies. Beat all in a mortar; and when used, roll and fry it. Serve it with fried sippets, or on stewed vegetables, or on white collops.

VEAL SCALLOPS. Mince some cold veal very small, and set it over the fire with a scrape of nutmeg, a little pepper and salt, and a little cream. Heat it for a few minutes, then put it into the scallop shells, and fill them with crumbs of bread. Lay on some pieces of butter, and brown the scallops before the fire. Either veal or chicken looks and eats well, prepared in this way, and lightly covered with crumbs of fried bread; or these may be laid on in little heaps.

VEAL-SUET PUDDING. Cut the crumb of a threepenny loaf into slices, boil and sweeten two quarts of new milk, and pour over it. When soaked, pour out a little of the milk; mix it with six eggs well beaten, and half a nutmeg. Lay the slices of bread into a dish, with layers of currants and veal suet shred, a pound of each. Butter the dish well, and bake it; or if preferred, boil the pudding in a bason.

VEAL SWEETBREAD. Parboil a fine fresh sweetbread for five minutes, and throw it into a basin of water. When the sweetbread is cold, dry it thoroughly in a cloth, and roast it plain. Or beat up the yolk of an egg, and prepare some fine bread crumbs. Run a lark spit or a skewer through it, and tie it on the ordinary spit. Egg it over with a paste brush, powder it well with bread crumbs, and roast it. Serve it up with fried bread crumbs round it, and melted butter, with a little mushroom ketchup and lemon juice. Or serve the sweetbread on toasted bread, garnished with egg sauce or gravy. Instead of spitting the sweetbread, it may be done in a Dutch oven, or fried.

VEGETABLES. There is nothing in which the difference between an elegant and an ordinary table is more visible, than in the dressing of vegetables, especially greens. They may be equally as fine at first, at one place as at another, but their look and taste afterwards are very different, owing entirely to the careless manner in which they have been prepared. Their appearance at table however is not all that should be considered; for though it is certainly desirable that they should be pleasing to the eye, it is of still greater consequence that their best qualities should be carefully preserved. Vegetables are generally a wholesome diet, but become very prejudicial if not properly dressed. Cauliflowers, and others of the same species, are often boiled only crisp, to preserve their beauty. For the look alone, they had better not be boiled at all, and almost as well for the purpose of food, as in such a crude state they are scarcely digestible by the strongest stomach. On the other hand, when overboiled they become vapid, and in a state similar to decay, in which they afford no sweet purifying juices to the stomach, but load it with a mass of mere feculent matter. The same may be said of many other vegetables, their utility being too often sacrificed to appearance, and sent to table in a state not fit to be eaten. A contrary error often prevails respecting potatoes, as if they could never be done too much. Hence they are popped into the saucepan or steamer, just when it happens to suit, and are left doing, not for the time they require, but till it is convenient to take them up; when perhaps their nutricious qualities are all boiled away, and they taste of nothing but water. Ideas of nicety and beauty in this case ought all to be subservient to utility; for what is beauty in vegetables growing in the garden is not so at table, from the change of circumstances. They are brought to be eaten, and if not adapted properly to the occasion, they are deformities on the dish instead of ornaments. The true criterion of beauty is their suitableness to the purposes intended. Let them be carefully adapted to this, by being neither under nor over done, and they will not fail to please both a correct eye and taste, while they constitute a wholesome species of diet. A most pernicious method of dressing vegetables is often adopted, by putting copper into the saucepan with them in the form of halfpence. This is a dangerous experiment, as the green colour imparted by the copperas, renders them in the highest degree unwholesome, and even poisonous. Besides, it is perfectly unnecessary, for if put into boiling water with a little salt, and boiled up directly, they will be as beautifully green as the most fastidious person can require. A little pearlash might safely be used on such an occasion, and with equal effect, its alkaline properties tending to correct the acidity. Many vegetables are more wholesome, and more agreeable to the taste, when stewed a good while, only care must be taken that they stew merely, without being suffered to boil. Boiling produces a sudden effect, stewing a slower effect, and both have their appropriate advantages. But if preparations which ought only to stew, are permitted to boil, the process is destroyed, and a premature effect produced, that cannot be corrected by any future stewing. In order to have vegetables in the best state for the table, they should be gathered in their proper season, when they are in the greatest perfection, and that is when they are most plentiful. Forced vegetables seldom attain their true flavour, as is evident from very early asparagus, which is altogether inferior to that which is matured by nature and common culture, or the mere operation of the sun and climate. Peas and Potatoes are seldom worth eating before midsummer; unripe vegetables being as insipid and unwholesome as unripe fruit, and are liable to the same objections as when they are destroyed by bad cooking. Vegetables are too commonly treated with a sort of cold distrust, as if they were natural enemies. They are seldom admitted freely at our tables, and are often tolerated only upon a sideboard in small quantities, as if of very inferior consideration. The effect of this is like that of all indiscriminate reserve, that we may negatively be said to lose friends, because we have not the confidence to make them. From the same distrust or prejudice, there are many vegetables never used at all, which are nevertheless both wholesome and palatable, particularly amongst those best known under the denomination of herbs. The freer use of vegetable diet would be attended with a double advantage, that of improving our health, and lessening the expense of the table. Attention should however be paid to their size and quality, in order to enjoy them in their highest degree of perfection. The middle size are generally to be preferred to the largest or the smallest; they are more tender, and full of flavour, just before they are quite full grown. Freshness is their chief value and excellence, and the eye easily discovers whether they have been kept too long, as in that case they lose all their verdure and beauty. Roots, greens, salads, and the various productions of the garden, when first gathered, are plump and firm, and have a fragrant freshness which no art can restore, when they have lost it by long keeping, though it will impart a little freshness to put them into cold spring water for some time before they are dressed. They should neither be so young as not to have acquired their good qualities, nor so old as to be on the point of losing them. To boil them in soft water will best preserve the colour of such as are green; or if only hard water be at hand, a tea-spoonful of potash should be added. Great care should be taken to pick and cleanse them thoroughly from dust, dirt, and insects, and nicely to trim off the outside leaves. If allowed to soak awhile in water a little salted, it will materially assist in cleansing them from insects. All the utensils employed in dressing vegetables should be extremely clean and nice; and if any copper vessel is ever used for the purpose, the greatest attention must be paid to its being well tinned. The scum which arises from vegetables as they boil should be carefully removed, as cleanliness is essential both to their looking and eating well. The lid of the saucepan should always be taken off when they boil, to give access to the air, even if it is not otherwise thought necessary. Put in the vegetables when the water boils, with a little salt, and let them boil quickly; when they sink to the bottom, they are generally done enough. Take them up immediately, or they will lose their colour and goodness. Drain the water from them thoroughly, before they are sent to table. When greens are quite fresh gathered, they will not require so much boiling by at least a third of the time, as when they have been gathered a day or two and brought to the public market. The following table shows when the various kinds of vegetables are in season, or the time of their earliest natural growth, and when they are most plentiful, or in their highest perfection.

Artichokes, July, September, ---- Jerusalem ditto, Sept. November, Angelica stalks, May, June, Asparagus, April, June, Beet roots, Dec. January, Boricole, November, January Cabbage, May, July, ---- Red ditto, July, August, ---- White ditto, October, Cardoons, Nov. December, Carrots, May, August, Cauliflowers, June, August, Celery, Sept. November, Chervil, March, May, Corn Salad, May, June, Cucumbers, July, September, Endive, June, October, Kidney Beans, July, August, Leeks, Sept. December, Lettuce, April, July, Onions, August, November, Parsley, February, March, Parsnips, July, October, Peas, June, August, Potatoes, June, November, Radishes, March, June, ---- Spanish ditto, August, September, Scarlet Beans, July, August, Small Salad, May, June, Salsify, July, August, Scorzonera, July, August, Sea Kale, April, May, Shalots, August, October, Savory Cabbage, Sept. November, Sorrel, June, July, Spinage, March, July, ---- Winter ditto, Oct. November, Turnips, May, July, Turnip tops, April, May, Windsor Beans, June, August.

VEGETABLES AND FISH. Pick, wash, and chop some sorrel, spinage, small onions or chives, and parsley. Put them into a stewpan with fresh butter, a good spoonful of lemon or Seville orange juice, or vinegar and water, some essence of anchovy, and cayenne pepper. Do these gently over the fire till the vegetables are tender, then put in the fish, and stew them till well done.