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French · Main

Blanquette de Veau à l'Ancienne

  • Intermediate
  • 60 min
  • roughly 3 of 4 for cost

rich · bright · umami-deep · herb-fresh Leads with richness that coats and comforts, acid holding everything up to the light, lifted green at the very end.

Ingredients

  • 1.4 kg veal shoulder, in 5 cm pieces
  • 1.5 litres cold water
  • 12 g fine salt
  • 1 onion, stuck with 2 cloves
  • 2 carrots, whole
  • 1 leek, white part only
  • a bouquet of thyme, bay and parsley stalks
  • 60 g butter
  • 60 g plain flour
  • 200 g button mushrooms
  • 200 g pearl onions, peeled
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 150 ml double cream
  • 1 lemon, juiced
  • 2 g ground white pepper

The skills inside

Sautéing & the shallow fryThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilStraining & passing through a sieveSkimming: foam, fat and a clear broth

Allergen screen

Found: gluten · dairy · egg

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

  1. Cover the veal with the cold water, bring it slowly to a shiver and skim until the foam stops rising; the liquid must stay pale and the meat must not take any colour at any point in this dish.
  2. Add the clouted onion, carrots, leek, bouquet and salt and poach at 85C (185F) for 90 minutes, until a piece parts under spoon pressure. Lift the meat out and strain the broth. 90 min
  3. Cook the butter and flour together for 2 minutes without letting them blond, whisk in 1 litre of the hot broth, and simmer 15 minutes, skimming the skin that gathers where the pan is coolest. 2 min
  4. Glaze the mushrooms and pearl onions in a little butter and water with the lid ajar and no browning, then slide them and the veal into the sauce.
  5. Off the heat, whisk the yolks into the cream, temper with two ladles of hot sauce, return it all to the pan and stir over the lowest possible flame until it coats the back of a spoon. Finish with lemon and white pepper.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes

  • It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
  • The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
  • Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
  • The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
  • Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.

Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.

Sautéing & the shallow fry 80 recipes

  • Everything sits in a single layer with visible space between the pieces: nothing stacked, nothing touching, or the pan is too small for the quantity.
  • The pieces move freely and keep moving, sliding across the pan rather than sticking and tearing when the pan is worked.
  • Light even browning arrived at quickly: colour on most faces, not the deep crust of a sear and not grey.
  • A thin film of fat with the food glossed by it: no pool left in the pan at the end, and nothing greasy on the fingers or the plate.
  • Cooked through but still firm, having spent only a few minutes in the pan: anything that has gone soft has been in there too long.

Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, the pan cooled, and the food released its water: what was meant to brown in three minutes stews for ten and comes out grey, slack and wet.

At the Table

The Pour
Nebbiolo (Langhe) or aged Pinot Noir
Also Right
White Burgundy for cream-based versions
From the Taps
Dubbel
Zero-Proof
Roasted barley tea

Earth speaking to earth: forest-floor reds echo fungal depth; truffle and Nebbiolo literally share a hillside and a season.

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Blanquette de Veau à l'Ancienne Search YouTube: Jacques Pépin on Blanquette de Veau à l'Ancienne A YouTube search for Jacques Pépin and this dish. No affiliation.