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Sautéd Veal Cutlet or Chops
Dust the veal lightly with salt and pepper and roll it in slightly beaten egg, which has been diluted with a fourth cupful of water to an egg, and then dust it thoroughly with cornmeal, or very fine dry bread crumbs. Place in a fryingpan, in which sufficient Snowdrift has been melted to keep the meat from sticking, and brown it quickly on both sides. Then cover it and let it simmer in its own juices for about twenty-five minutes. Serve with a gravy made from the drippings in the pan, or with Tomato Sauce, or with boiled spaghetti or noodles, re-heated in Cream or White Sauce No. 2.
A straightforward breaded veal cutlet, with the browning and the covered simmer doing the work. The Snowdrift is the only period-specific item.
- SnowdriftA branded cottonseed-oil shortening sold from the 1900s onward; the use of the brand name and the cross-references suggest this is a Snowdrift promotional cookbook. Any neutral fat works — clarified butter, lard, or a high-smoke-point oil — using just enough to film the pan.
- Egg wash proportionA quarter cup of water per egg is a thin dip by modern habit, but it is deliberate: the loose wash gives a light coating that sets rather than a thick batter. One egg handles roughly a pound of cutlets.
- Cornmeal vs. crumbsCornmeal gives a coarser, sandier crust that holds up better to the covered simmer than fine breadcrumbs, which soften. Use fine-ground cornmeal, not coarse polenta grind.
- Brown quickly, then coverThe hinge is the order of operations. Get real color on both sides over fairly high heat first; once the lid goes on, the pan environment turns to steam and no further browning happens.
- The twenty-five minutesReasonable for thick chops or a bone-in cutlet, which benefit from the low moist cooking. Thin scaloppine-cut veal, which is what most markets sell now, will be dry well before that — five to eight minutes covered is enough for quarter-inch slices.
- Simmering "in its own juices"Thin modern cutlets may not release enough liquid to keep the pan from scorching. A few tablespoons of stock or water added under the lid keeps it going without diluting the drippings much.
- Pan gravyPour off excess fat, keep a tablespoon or so, whisk in a scant tablespoon of flour, then a cup of milk or stock and simmer. Scrape the browned coating fragments off the pan into it — that is where the flavor is.
- YieldNot stated. Figure one 5–6 oz cutlet or one chop per person, and expect a pound and a half of veal to serve four.
This is the standard American breaded-veal treatment that sits between European schnitzel and the tomato-sauced dishes of Italian-American cooking, and the recipe hedges its bets by offering pan gravy, tomato sauce, or spaghetti in white sauce as finishes. The book itself is a promotional cookbook for Snowdrift, a cottonseed-oil shortening, and it is one of the books given away or sold cheaply by manufacturers so that home cooks would learn recipes written around a single branded fat. Veal was more common on American tables then than now: dairy farming produced surplus bull calves, and cutlets and chops were inexpensive butcher's items rather than a specialty purchase. The instruction to brown quickly and then cover and simmer is often said to reflect the era's veal, which may have been cut thicker and tougher than the pale, tender scaloppine sold today.