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CUTLETS (a l'ltalienne)
Cut two pounds of the fillet of veal in slices about three-quarters of an inch thick. Shape them into round cutlets three inches in diameter, flour them well, and fry them in hot butter until done enough. When they are browned the pan should be held high above the fire, and covered so that the cutlets may become sufficiently cooked without being dry. Serve them on macaroni, which has been stewed until tender, and send brown gravy to table in a tureen. The gravy should be well flavoured with fresh tomatoes, when seasonable. At other times tomato sauce may be used. Time, a quarter of an hour to fry the cutlets. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A straightforward pan-fried veal dish whose only real difficulty is heat management, described here in the language of an open coal range.
- The hinge: gentle finish"Held high above the fire, and covered" means: brown hard, then drop the heat and let the cutlets finish through in their own steam. On a gas or induction hob, sear over medium-high, then reduce to low, cover, and give them a few minutes more.
- TimingA quarter of an hour is at the upper end for 3/4-inch veal. Three to four minutes a side to colour, then five or so covered on low, will usually do it; veal fillet dries out fast, and current guidance is to cook it to an internal 145F.
- Fillet of vealThe book means the leg cut sold today as top round or cushion, not the tenderloin. Ask for veal escalope cut thick, or cut your own rounds from a piece of leg.
- Cost1s. 2d. per pound is Victorian pricing and has no modern equivalent; the figure alone will not tell you where veal stood against other meats.
- MacaroniNineteenth-century macaroni was long tubular pasta, often broken into lengths. "Stewed until tender" points to simmering in stock or milk, though boiling in water was also common in the period. Either approach works here.
- Brown gravyA meat-stock gravy, reduced and thickened, not the pan juices alone. Deglaze the frying pan into it so nothing is lost, and fold in chopped fresh tomato off the heat so it keeps its edge.
- YieldTwo pounds of veal for four or five is plausible if the macaroni is substantial. Expect about six cutlets of three inches, allowing for trim.
Cassell's used "à l'italienne" loosely to mean anything served with macaroni, tomato, or both — the two ingredients that signalled Italy to a British kitchen before regional Italian cooking was widely understood here, though in classical French usage the term denotes a specific sauce of mushroom, shallot, ham and herbs. Macaroni had long been familiar in England — its arrival is often linked by tradition to young men returning from the Grand Tour, though it appears in English cookery well before the eighteenth century — and dried pasta was by then a standard grocery item. The note that gravy should be flavoured with fresh tomatoes "when seasonable" is a reminder that tomatoes were still a summer crop in Britain; the fallback to bottled or made-up tomato sauce for the rest of the year is the sort of practical concession that runs through the whole book.