Veal Cutlets
The cutlets should be cut three-quarters of an inch in thickness; beat them well, dip in the yolk of beaten egg, and roll in bread crumbs, frying in hot lard until brown. Garnish with parsley and rolls of thin-sliced fried bacon.
A short, complete method for breaded veal — the period's default treatment for a cutlet. A few of its assumptions need translating.
- What the cut isA veal cutlet of this period is usually a slice off the leg, cut across the grain — close to what a butcher now sells as veal round steak or scaloppine before pounding, though loin cutlets were also called by the name. Three-quarters of an inch is thick by modern standards; expect several minutes a side.
- "Beat them well"This means pounding to loosen the fibres, not flattening to paper. Work between plastic wrap with the flat of a mallet until the slice is even in thickness, which matters more than any target measurement.
- Egg yolk onlyYolk alone gives a richer, faster-browning crust than whole egg but is stiff to work with. Thin it with a spoonful of water or milk per yolk so it coats rather than clumps.
- Frying in lardLard was the standard frying medium and still works well here — high smoke point, clean flavour. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, is the usual substitute. Enough fat to come a third of the way up the cutlet is right; this is pan-frying, not deep-frying.
- "Hot" fatThe recipe gives no temperature. Aim for a brisk frying heat: a crumb dropped in should sizzle at once without darkening immediately. Too cool and the coating soaks; too hot and the crumbs burn before the veal is done.
- DonenessModern guidance for veal is 145°F followed by a short rest; the period preference was fully cooked and firm, which is easy to overshoot into dryness.
- Flour firstThe recipe goes straight from egg to crumb. A light dusting of seasoned flour before the egg makes the coating adhere far better, and it is worth adding — the original also omits salt entirely, so season the flour or the meat.
- The bacon garnish"Rolls of thin-sliced fried bacon" are bacon slices rolled into cylinders and fried or baked until they hold their shape. Skewer them with a toothpick before cooking so they do not unwind.
- YieldNot stated. Figure one 5–6 oz cutlet per person; four cutlets serve four with the bacon and a starch.
Breaded, pan-fried veal runs through nineteenth- and twentieth-century American cookbooks under a range of names — veal cutlets, breaded veal, Wiener schnitzel where German influence was strong — and this terse version assumes the reader already knows the shape of the dish. Veal is often said to have been relatively cheap and easy to come by in an era when dairy herds produced far more bull calves than were wanted, though prices varied a good deal; cutlets appear in household manuals alongside the humbler cuts rather than as a luxury. The egg-and-crumb coating is the period's all-purpose answer to a lean cut with no fat of its own: the crust browns, seals and supplies the richness the meat lacks, and the bacon garnish works to similar effect. Lard as the frying fat is simply what was in the kitchen; the shift to vegetable shortenings and oils came later in the century and quietly rewrote the flavour of dishes like this one.