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CHICKEN CUTLETS (French method)
Take the remains of one or two cold chickens. Cut them into neat joints, strew over them a little salt, pepper, and pounded mace, dip them into clarified butter, then into egg, and cover them with bread-crumbs and finely-minced parsley. Fry them lightly in hot butter or dripping. Put a puree of sorrel or spinach in the middle of the dish, place the cutlets round it, and grate a little Parmesan cheese over them. Send good gravy made of the bones and trimmings to table in a tureen. Time, five or six minutes to fry the cutlets. Sufficient for four or five persons. Probable cost, 10d., exclusive of the cold chicken.
A made-over dish for leftover roast chicken: the meat is already cooked, so the frying is only to set the crumb and colour it. Everything here depends on that.
- Five or six minutes means colour, not cookingThe chicken is cold and cooked. Fry over medium heat only until the crumbs are golden and the meat is heated through — two to three minutes a side. Longer and the joints dry out inside their crust.
- "Cutlets" here are jointsNot pounded escalopes. Divide the birds into wings, thighs, drumsticks and halved breasts; the flatter and more even the piece, the better it crumbs and fries. Boned thigh meat works best of all.
- The butter-then-egg dipDipping in clarified butter before egging is unusual; the recipe gives no reason for it, and it is not clear that this is what the title means by the "French method". Let the butter set for a minute before egging, or it may slide off. Clarified rather than whole butter avoids scorching milk solids.
- Pounded maceMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg, sold ground or as blades. Ground mace from a jar is fine; use about a quarter teaspoon for two birds' worth of joints. Nutmeg is a fair substitute at half the quantity.
- Frying fatDripping is fat rendered from roast meat, most often beef; any neutral oil or clarified butter does the same job. The recipe says only to fry them lightly, so the depth of fat is a matter of judgement — enough to crisp the crumb evenly.
- Sorrel puréeSorrel is sharply lemony and collapses to a purée in a couple of minutes with a little butter; it cuts the fried crumb in a way spinach does not. Sorrel is a farmers' market item rather than a supermarket one, so spinach, as the recipe allows, is the practical choice — squeeze it hard before puréeing or it will water the dish.
- The gravySimmer the carcass and trimmings with an onion, a carrot and a bay leaf for 40 minutes, strain, reduce and season. It is worth doing while the joints are being crumbed, and a tureen just means passing it separately rather than pouring it over the crust.
- Yield and costFour to five as written, probably as one dish among several rather than as a main course; count on three to four if it is the centre of the meal. The 10d. covers everything but the chicken, as the recipe states — the point is that the bird is already paid for.
This belongs among the "remains of cold" recipes that fill a large part of every big Victorian household manual: a joint or bird was roasted whole for one meal and served again in another form, since throwing meat away was poor housekeeping. Calling the joints "cutlets" and the method French is part of that rebuilding — French terms carried prestige, and English cookery writers of the period used "cutlet" loosely for almost anything crumbed, fried and arranged in a ring around a central purée. Sorrel was a common English kitchen-garden green through the nineteenth century and is much harder to buy now, which is one reason the recipe can name it first where a modern shopper would reach for spinach.