Take a fillet of veal, rub it with salt, and then with a sharp knife make deep incisions all over the surface, the bottom as well as the top and sides. Make a stuffing of grated stale bread, butter, chopped sweet marjoram, grated lemon-peel, nutmeg, pepper and salt, mixed up with beaten yolk of egg to bind and give it consistency. Fill the holes or incisions with the stuffing, pressing it down well with your fingers. Reserve some of the stuffing to rub all over the outside of the meat. Have ready some very thin slices of cold boiled ham, the fatter the better. Cover the veal with them, fastening them on with skewers. Put it into a pot, and stew it slowly in a very little water, just enough to cover it. It will take at least five hours to stew; or more, in proportion to its size. When done, take off the ham, and lay it round the veal in a dish.
You may stew with it a quart or three pints of young green peas, put in about an hour before dinner; add to them a little butter and pepper while they are stewing. Serve them up in the dish with the veal, laying the slices of ham upon them.
If you omit the ham, stew the veal entirely in lard.
Lay four wooden skewers across the bottom of your stew-pan, and place the meat upon them; having first carefully washed it, and rubbed it with salt. Add a table-spoonful of whole pepper, the leaves from a bunch of sweet marjoram, a bunch of parsley leaves chopped, two onions peeled and sliced, and a piece of butter rolled in flour. Pour in two quarts of water. Cover it closely, and after it has come to a boil, lessen the fire, and let the meat only simmer for two hours or more. Before you serve it up, pour the liquid over it.
This dish will be greatly improved by stewing with it a few slices of ham, or the remains of a cold ham.
Veal when simply boiled is too insipid. To stew it is much better.
The best cutlets are those taken from the leg or fillet. Cut them about half an inch thick, and as large as the palm of your hand. Season them with pepper and salt. Grate some stale bread, and rub it through a cullender, adding to it chopped sweet marjoram, grated lemon-peel, and some powdered mace or nutmeg. Spread the mixture on a large flat dish. Have ready in a pan some beaten egg. First dip each cutlet into the egg, and then into the seasoning on the dish, seeing that a sufficient quantity adheres to both sides of the meat. Melt in your frying-pan, over a quick fire, some beef-dripping, lard, or fresh butter, and when it boils lay your cutlets in it, and fry them thoroughly; turning them on both sides, and taking care that they do not burn. Place them in a covered dish near the fire, while you finish the gravy in the pan, by first skimming it, and then shaking in a little flour and stirring it round. Pour the gravy hot round the cutlets, and garnish with little bunches of curled parsley.