Recipes: Veal

Adapted Recipes

Stuffed Veal Roast

Adapted from Carter 1796

  • 5 white button mushrooms
  • 10 ounce frozen spinach, one box, defrosted
  • 3 sprigs fresh rosemary
  • 1 orange zested
  • 1 lemon zested
  • 3 lbs veal roast, netted and tied
  • kosher salt
  • black pepper
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp honey
  • 6 tbsp apricot preserves
  • 2 tbsp mustard
  • 10 ounces large pimiento-stuffed green olives

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

  2. Place the mushrooms, defrosted spinach, rosemary leaves, olives, orange zest, and lemon zest into a food processor. Pulse to combine until the end result is a paste.

  3. Untie the roast, seasoning both sides with salt and pepper. Spread the stuffing paste evenly over the surface, generously covering it.

  4. Reroll the roast and tie it tightly just enough to secure. Do not tie too tightly as the filling will ooze out.

  5. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the veal roast and sear on all sides until the meat is a deep golden brown. Remove the roast into the roasting pan.

  6. In a small bowl, mix honey, apricot preserves, and mustard. Rub all the meat surfaces with a thick coating of the glaze, reserving some of the mixture. 

  7. Bake for 1 hour covered. Remove the roast and baste with remaining mix. Return to oven, uncovered for 15 more minutes. Allow to rest for 10 minutes before slicing.

When you roast the loin or fillet, paper the udder of the fillet, to preserve the fat, and the back of the loin to prevent it from scorching; lay the meat at first some distance from the fire, that it may soak; baste it well with butter, then dust on a little flour. When it has soaked some time, then draw it near the fire; and a little before you take it up, baste it again. Most people choose to stuff a fillet. The breast you must roast with the caul on, and the sweetbread skewered on the back-side. When it is near enough, take off the caul, and baste it with butter. It is proper to have a toast nicely baked, and laid in the dish with a loin of veal. Garnish with lemon and barberries.

The stuffing of a fillet of veal is made in the following manner; take about a pound of grated bread, half a pound of suet, some parsley, shred fine, thyme, marjoram, or savory, which you like best, a little grated nutmeg, lemon-peel, pepper and salt, and mix these well together, with whites and yolks of eggs.
(Carter, 1796:21-22)


Roasted Loin of Veal with Shallots and Mustard

Adapted from Leslie 1840

  • 2.5 lbs veal loin, trimmed and tied loosely at 1 inch intervals
  • 1/3 cup Dijon mustard
  • 5 ounces thin slices of fatback
  • 1 head garlic, separated into cloves and peeled
  • 12 shallots, peeled
  • 1/2 cup dry white wine
  • 3 tsp finely chopped fresh tarragon
  • 1/4 cup water

  1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

  2. Season the veal with salt and pepper, spread the mustard over the top and sides. Cover the veal with fatback. Arrange veal, garlic and shallots in a roasting pan, add the wine, and roast for 1 hour, basting every 15 minutes.

  3. Discard the fatback and roast for 15-20 more minutes until the internal temperature registers 150 degrees. Transfer to a cutting board and let rest loosely covered with foil.

  4. Transfer the garlic and the shallots to a bowl and toss with 2 teaspoons of the chopped tarragon and cover with foil.

  5. While veal is resting, skim the fat from the pan juices add the water and deglaze over high heat, scraping until mixture is reduced by half. Strain and season the gravy with salt and pepper.

  6. Cut the veal into 1/2 inch thick slices, arrange on platter and scatter garlic and shallots. Nap the veal with some gravy and sprinkle leftover tarragon. Serve remaining gravy separately.

Take out the bone, and secure with skewers the fat flap to the outside of the meat. Prepare a stuffing of fresh butter or suet minced fine, and an equal quantity of grated bread-crumbs, a large table-spoonful of grated lemon-peel, a table-spoonful of sweet marjoram chopped or rubbed to powder, a nutmeg grated, and a little pepper and salt, with a sprig of chopped parsley. Mix all these ingredients with beaten yolk of egg, and stuff the place from whence the bone was taken. Make deep cuts or incisions all over the top of the veal, and fill them with some of the stuffing. You may stick into each hole an inch of fat ham or salt pork, cut very thin.
Having papered the fat, spit the veal and put it into the roaster, keeping it at first not too near the fire. Put a little salt and water into the dripping-pan, and for awhile baste the meat with it. Then baste it with its own gravy. A fillet of veal will require four hours roasting. As it proceeds, place it nearer to the fire. Half an hour before it is done, remove the paper, and baste the meat with butter, having first dredged it very lightly with flour. Having skimmed the gravy, mix some thin melted butter with it.
If convenient, you may in making the stuffing, use a large proportion of chopped mushrooms that have been preserved in sweet oil, or of chopped pickled oysters. Cold ham shred fine will improve it.
You may stuff a fillet of veal entirely with sausage meat.
To accompany a fillet of veal, the usual dish is boiled ham or bacon.
A shoulder of veal may be stuffed and roasted in a similar manner.
(Leslie, 1840:94-95)


Philadelphia Pepper Pot Soup

Adapted from Thomas 1915

  • 3 lbs beef tripe
  • 1 knuckle of veal with meat
  • 2 lbs marrowbone cracked
  • 2 large onions, sliced
  • 1 tsp allspice
  • 6 whole cloves
  • 4 potatoes, finely diced
  • 2 tsp dried marjoram
  • 2 tbsp parsley chopped
  • kosher salt
  • black pepper

Soup Bouquet

  • 3 sprigs parsley
  • 2 sprigs thyme
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 carrot, chunked
  • 1 tsp crushed red pepper

Dumplings

  • 1 cup flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp shortening
  • 6 tbsp milk

Soup

  1. Wash tripe and place in a large pot with 4 quarts of water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 6 to 7 hours.

  2. Let tripe cool in the broth then remove and cut into very small pieces.

  3. Pour broth into a container.

  4. While tripe is cooking, put veal knuckle in a second pot with 2 quarts of water. Remove the marrow from the marrowbone and heat until tender. Combine with the knuckle and the demarrowed bone.

  5. Add the soup bouquet, allspice and cloves and cook over low heat for 5 hours or under very tender.

  6. Cool veal in broth until meat can be handled, then chop veal into small pieces, discarding the bones. Add to chopped tripe. Pour broth into separate container. Refrigerate everything overnight.

  7. The next day skim and discard the fat from both broths. Combine both and add the chopped tripe and veal. Add in potatoes, marjoram, and salt and pepper. Cook over low heat for about 45 minutes. Add parsley, drop dumplings into the broth (see below).

Dumplings

  1. Sift flour, baking powder and salt together.

  2. Add shortening and pinch it in with your fingers until it is well distributed. Gradually stir in milk with a fork – just enough to make a soft dough. Drop by tablespoons into simmering soup, cover tightly, and cook 15 minutes.

This recipe for far-famed “Philadelphia Pepper Pot” was given Mary by a friend living in the Quaker City, a good cook, who vouched for its excellence:
The ingredients consist of the following:
1 knuckle of veal.
2 pounds of plain tripe.
2 pounds of honeycomb tripe.
1 large onion.
1 bunch of pot-herbs.
4 medium-sized potatoes.
1 bay leaf – salt and cayenne pepper to season.
½ pound of beef suet – and flour for dumplings.
The day before you wish to use the “Pepper Pot” procure 2 pounds of plain tripe and 2 pounds of honeycomb tripe. Wash thoroughly in cold water. Place in a kettle. Cover with cold water and boil eight hours; then remove tripe from water, and when cold cut into pieces about ¾ of a inch square. The day following get a knuckle of veal, wash and cover with cold water – about three quarts – bring slowly to the simmering point, skimming off the scum which arises, simmer for three hours. Remove the meat from the bones, cut into small pieces, strain both and return it to the kettle. Add a bay leaf, one large onion, chopped, simmer one hour; then add four medium-sized potatoes, cut like dice, and add to the broth. Wash a bunch of pot-herbs, chop parsley (and add last), rub off the thyme leaves, cut red pepper in half and add all to broth; then add meat and tripe and season with salt; if liked hot, use a pinch of cayenne pepper. For the dumplings, take 1 cup of beef suet, chopped fine, 2 cups flour, pinch of salt, mix well together and moisten with enough cold water to allow of their being molded or rolled into tiny dumplings, the size of a small marble. Flour these well to prevent sticking together. When all are prepared, drop into soup, simmer a few minutes, add parsley and serve at once.
(Thomas 1915:242-243)


Mock Turtle Soup

Adapted from Leslie 1840

  • 1.5 lbs ground veal
  • 6 stalks celery, chopped
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 cup chopped onion
  • 3/4 cup butter
  • 15 oz tomato puree
  • 30 oz chicken broth
  • 30 oz beef broth
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 cup ketchup
  • 1 tsp hot sauce
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1.5 tsp thyme
  • 1.5 cups lemon juice
  • 1/4 cup parsley, minced
  • 6 hard boiled eggs, chopped
  • kosher salt
  • pepper

  1. Saute the veal, celery, garlic and onion in butter until the meat is brown and veggies are translucent. Add to the slow cooker.

  2. Mix flour and water together, whisking lightly until incorporated.

  3. Add tomato puree, chicken broth, beef broth, flour mixture, Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, hot sauce, bay leaves, thyme, salt and pepper. Stir.

  4. Cook on low heat for 4 hours.

  5. Add lemon juice, parsley, and eggs 30 minutes and remove bay leaves before serving.

This soup will require eight hours to prepare. Take a large calf’s head, and having cleaned, washed, and soaked it, put it into a pot with a knuckle of veal, and the hock of a ham, or a few slices of bacon; but previously cut off and reserve enough of the veal to make two dozen small forcemeat balls. Put the head and the other meat into as much water as will cover it very well, so that it may not be necessary to replenish it : this soup being always made very rich. Let it boil slowly four hours, skimming it carefully. As soon as no more scum rises, put in six potatoes, and three turnips, all sliced thin; with equal proportions of parsley, sweet marjoram, and sweet basil, chopped fine; and pepper and salt to your taste.
An hour before you send the meat to table, make about two dozen small force-meat balls of minced veal and beef-suet in equal quantities, seasoned with pepper and salt; sweet herbs, grated lemon-peel, and powdered nutmeg and mace. Add some beaten yolk of egg to make all these ingredients stick together. Flour the balls very well, and fry them in butter. Before you put them into the soup, take out the head, and the other meat. Cut the meat form the head in small pieces, and return it to the soup. When the soup is nearly done, stir in half a pint of Madeira. Have ready at least a dozen egg-balls made of the yolks of hard boiled eggs, grated or pounded in a mortar, and mixed with a little flour and sufficient raw yolk of egg to bind them. Make them up into the form and size of boy’s marbles. Throw them into the soup at the last, and also squeeze in the juice of a lemon. Let it get another slow boil, and then put it into the tureen.
We omit a receipt for real turtle soup, as when that very expensive, complicated, and difficult dish is prepared in a private family, it is advisable to hire a first-rate cook for the express purpose.
An easy way is to get it ready to made, in any quantity you please, from a turtle-soup house.
(Leslie 1840:30-31)


Homemade Gelatin

Adapted from Carter 1796

  • 3-4 lbs calve bones (can substitute other animal bones)
  • 4-5 quarts filtered water
  • 1 tbsp kosher salt

  1. Combine ingredients in a slow cooker on low overnight or for up to 48 hours.

  2. Strain through cheesecloth. Refrigerate the mixture until firm or overnight.

  3. Chip or scrape any fat off the top and save for cooking or discard. Flip block and remove settled parts from bottom.

  4. Gelatin can be melted and flavored (see additional recipes below) or kept solid and stored for up to a week on the fridge or a year in the freezer. Gelatin can also be used as a base for a soup or stew.

Cut four calves feet in pieces, put them into a pipkin, with a gallon of water, cover them close, and boil them softly till almost half be consumed, then run the liquor through a sieve, and let it stand till it be cold. With a knife take off the fat at top and bottom, melt the fine part of the jelly in a preserving pan or skillet, and put in a pint of Rhenish wine, the juice of four or five lemons, double refined sugar to your taste, the whites of eight eggs beaten to a froth; stir and boil all these together near half an hour; then pass it through a sieve into a jelly bag; put into your jelly bag a small sprig of rosemary and a piece of lemon-peel; pass it through the bag till it is as clear as water.
(Carter 1796:107-108)


Flavored Gelatin

Adapted from Carter 1796

  • 2 cups water
  • 3 tbsp unflavored gelatin

Lemon Flavor

  • 2 lemons, juiced
  • 1 tsp lemon zest
  • 2 tbsp honey

Grapefruit Flavor

  • 1 large grapefruit, juiced
  • 1 tsp honey

Flavored Gelatin

  1. Heat water over medium heat and dissolve gelatin

  2. Remove from heat stir in flavoring.

  3. Pour into containers and let chill 30-45 minutes.