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CUTLETS, VEAL (a la Chingara)
Take two pounds of the best part of a fillet of veal. Cut it into neat slices not less than an inch thick, and shape these neatly in rounds the size of the top of a tea-cup. Have a piece of cold boiled tongue for each cutlet, as nearly as possible the same size and shape. Put the trimmings of the cutlets, a little piece of rasped ham, a carrot, a large onion, a bunch of savoury herbs, and a sprig of parsley, into a saucepan with a pint of good veal stock. Let them simmer gently for an hour or more. Strain the liquid, and put it on one side for use. Flour the cutlets, and fry them in hot butter till they are sufficiently cooked, but not dried; plenty of butter or lard should be used, and when they are brown on both sides they should be held high above the fire for a few minutes, and covered. By this means they will be done through. Drain them from the fat, and keep them hot. Put one ounce of butter into a stewpan, dredge over it very gradually one ounce of flour, and keep stirring till it browns, but it must not burn. Mix with it the strained gravy, and any trimmings there may be of the tongue, finely minced. Warm the round pieces of tongue in this, and put one on each veal cutlet. Serve the cutlets in a circular form, add salt and pepper to the sauce, if necessary, and put it in the middle. Serve as hot as possible. Time, about a quarter of an hour to fry the cutlets. Sufficient for four or five persons. Probable cost, 1s. per pound.
A straightforward pan-fried veal dish whose real work is the little stock reduction made from the trimmings. Read the sauce steps first, since the gravy needs an hour of simmering before the cutlets go in the pan.
- The cut"The best part of a fillet of veal" is the boned leg, sold now as top round or cushion of veal, not the tenderloin. Cut it across the grain into rounds a full inch thick, about 3 inches across, which is what "the size of the top of a tea-cup" means.
- Rasped hamRasped means scraped or grated from a dry cured ham; a slice of prosciutto or a scrap of country ham torn small does the same job of adding salt and savour to the stock.
- Boiled tongueThe recipe specifies only cold boiled tongue; pressed cooked tongue, sold at some delicatessens, can be cut into rounds with a cutter. Failing that, thick-cut cooked ham will stand in, though it is a milder thing.
- "Held high above the fire"On a coal range this meant moving the pan off direct heat to finish the meat gently through. Brown both sides in hot butter, then drop the burner to low, cover, and let the cutlets coast until cooked; veal is done at 145F with a short rest.
- Don't dry the meatThe instruction "sufficiently cooked, but not dried" is the hinge. Inch-thick veal round has almost no fat and turns to board within a minute or two past done, so use a thermometer rather than the stated quarter of an hour.
- The brown rouxOne ounce each of butter and flour is roughly 2 tablespoons butter and a scant 1/4 cup flour. Cook it to a nut brown over moderate heat, stirring constantly; scorched roux is bitter and cannot be rescued.
- Stock quantityA pint of veal stock is 20 fl oz in this British book, about 2 1/2 US cups. After an hour's simmer with the vegetables you will have rather less, which is the point.
- ServingFour to five portions. The cutlets are arranged in a ring with the sauce poured into the centre, so warm the platter well; this dish loses heat fast.
The name is Cassell's spelling of zingara, French cookery's "gypsy style," a garnish generally traced to nineteenth-century restaurant kitchens and later codified by Escoffier as julienned tongue, ham, mushroom and truffle in a tomato-and-Madeira sauce. This domestic version keeps only the tongue and the scrap of ham, drops the truffle, and builds its sauce from a stock made of the meat's own trimmings, which is exactly the sort of economy Cassell's readers were expected to practise. The habit of shaping cutlets to a uniform round with a cutter and standing them in a circle around a central pool of sauce is often associated with the same period's service a la russe, where dishes arrived at table already composed rather than carved in front of the diners. The costing of a shilling a pound suggests that the veal was among the dearer butcher's meats available to the late Victorian household, though a single costing line can only hint at this.