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FOWL (a la Milanese)
Grate two ounces of Parmesan cheese, and mix with bread-crumbs. Cut a fowl into fillets, and dip each fillet into the crumbs; roll them in egg-yolk, well beaten, and then again into bread-crumbs, seasoned with pepper and salt. Fry them in butter until of a nice brown colour, and have ready a puree of tomato sauce to serve them on. Time, twenty minutes to fry. Probable cost, 4s. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A straightforward cutlet: chicken breaded with Parmesan crumbs, fried in butter, served on tomato purée. Two things need adjusting — the breading sequence and the frying time.
- The frying time is the problemTwenty minutes suits thick, bone-in pieces over a low fire, not the thin fillets described. Boneless breast cut into fillets of about half an inch needs roughly 3-4 minutes a side over medium heat, to 165F internal. Longer and the crust darkens while the meat dries out.
- Breading orderAs written the fillet goes crumb, egg, crumb. Modern practice is flour, then beaten egg, then crumbs: the flour gives the egg something to grip and the coating is far less likely to slide off in the pan. If you follow the original, press the first layer of crumbs on firmly and chill the fillets 20 minutes before frying.
- "Cut a fowl into fillets"A Victorian fowl was a mature bird, tougher and more flavourful than a modern broiler. Two boneless skinless breasts, halved horizontally and lightly flattened, give four even fillets and stand in perfectly. Thighs work too and stay juicier.
- Butter alone will burnTwenty minutes in plain butter guarantees black milk solids. Use clarified butter or ghee, or half butter and half a neutral oil, and wipe the pan between batches if the crumbs start to catch.
- Cheese and crumbsTwo ounces of Parmesan is roughly half a cup to a full cup grated, depending on how finely it is grated. Pair it with roughly twice that volume of dry crumbs; fresh soft crumbs hold too much moisture and steam rather than crisp.
- The tomato puréeHere purée means a smooth cooked tomato sauce, not the concentrated paste sold in tubes today. Simmer tinned tomatoes with a little onion and butter until thick, then sieve or blend, and season. Spoon it under the fillets so the crust stays crisp.
- Yield and costThree or four servings, as stated. The 4s. is a Victorian retail price and is of historical interest only.
Cassell's uses "à la Milanese" much as other British cookery books of the period often did — as shorthand for something crumbed with Parmesan and fried, after the Milanese cotoletta, the breaded veal cutlet for which the city is best known. The tomato purée underneath belongs to the same convention: tomato was a common English signal for "Italian" in this period, and tomato sauces recur in Cassell's attached to dishes with Milanese, Napolitaine and Italienne in their names. Substituting fowl for veal was ordinary economy, and the crumb-and-cheese treatment was applied fairly freely to whatever cutlet-shaped thing was to hand.