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CUTLETS (a la Venitienne)
Chop separately half a pint of mushrooms, two shallots, a little parsley, and a sprig of thyme. Mix them thoroughly and stew them for ten minutes over a small fire in a little butter, with a slice of fat bacon cut into dice. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over two pounds of veal cutlets, put them into the saucepan, and cook them gently till quite tender. Add a large spoonful of tomato sauce. Draw the saucepan from the fire for a minute or two, then thicken the sauce with the well-beaten yolks of three eggs mixed with a little cream. The sauce must not boil after the eggs are added. Before serving, squeeze in the juice of a lemon. Time, one hour. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A braise finished with an egg-and-cream liaison, in the manner Victorian kitchens called Venitienne. Almost everything hinges on the last step.
- The sauce must not boilOnce the yolks go in, keep the pan off direct heat and below about 180F. A boil scrambles the yolks and the sauce breaks into curds that will not come back. Temper the yolk-and-cream mixture with a ladle of the hot cooking liquid first, then stir it into the pan away from the flame.
- Half a pint of mushroomsA volume measure of chopped mushrooms; half an imperial pint is about 10 fl oz, perhaps 3 to 4 oz by weight. Cremini may sit closer to the flavour of period field mushrooms than white buttons.
- "A small fire"The lowest steady heat the burner will hold. The mushroom and bacon base is meant to sweat and give up liquid, not colour.
- Veal cutletsNot the paper-thin escalopes sold today, which would be leather in an hour. Use slices of leg or shoulder about half an inch thick, or veal shoulder cut into pieces, and let them braise until they yield to a fork.
- Cooking liquidThe recipe gives none beyond the butter and the juice from the mushrooms. Add a splash of stock or water if the pan runs dry before the meat is tender; you want a few spoonfuls of concentrated liquid left to build the sauce on.
- Tomato sauceA reduced, savoury cooked tomato sauce, not ketchup and not passata. A tablespoon of thick tomato puree with a little stock stands in adequately.
- Fat baconUnsmoked streaky bacon or salt pork diced small. Smoked supermarket bacon will dominate the mushrooms and shallots.
- The lemonAdd it after the pan is off the heat and the yolks are in, stirring gently. Acid plus heat is the other way an egg liaison curdles.
- YieldTwo pounds of veal for four or five, as stated served with rice or plain boiled potatoes to take the sauce.
Cassell's ran to a great many dishes labelled a la something, and "a la Venitienne" was one of the vaguer French tags in circulation: it was generally associated with a pale sauce sharpened with vinegar or lemon and green herbs rather than with anything traceable to Venice itself. What is genuinely old here is the technique, the liaison of egg yolks and cream, a thickening method that predates roux-based sauces in French practice and survives in blanquette de veau and in the Greek avgolemono. Veal is the natural partner for it because its pale meat and mild braising liquor take a delicate, un-browned sauce without fighting it. The costing of 1s. 2d. a pound is a reminder of who this book was for: a household with a cook, a coal range with room for a pan at the cool edge, and the patience for a sauce that cannot be left to itself.