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Ham, with Stewed Veal Cutlets
Cut a slice of ham with each cutlet, and trim them as nearly as possible to the same shape. Cook them in the stewpan, and serve them with the ham laid upon the cutlet. Dish them in a circle, and pour the sauce in the middle. (See VEAL CUTLETS.)
A fragment of a recipe rather than a whole one — Cassell's assumes you have already read the entry for veal cutlets and simply tells you how to pair and present them. A few points fill the gaps.
- It is a cross-reference, not a standalone methodThe actual cooking is under VEAL CUTLETS. Read that entry first or you have no timings at all.
- What a veal cutlet meantIn Victorian usage "cutlet" could mean a thin boneless slice from the leg or fillet, close to what a modern butcher calls an escalope, though the word was also used of a bone-in cutlet from the best end. If you take it as an escalope, have them cut thin and trim to a rough oval so the ham can be matched to it.
- The hamA slice of cured ham cut to about the same thickness as the cutlet. The recipe cooks the two together in the stewpan; if you prefer, add the ham later, since long stewing dries it and leaches its salt into the sauce.
- StewpanA lidded pan of the saucepan type; a modern saute pan or braiser will serve. What matters is that the cutlets lie in a single layer with the liquid barely covering them.
- Do not overcook the vealLean veal escalopes are done in a matter of minutes and turn grey and fibrous if held at a simmer. Brown them, add just enough stock to come halfway up, and keep the liquid at a bare tremble for 10-15 minutes at most.
- Season the sauce lastWith cured ham in the pan the cooking liquid will salt itself. Reduce the sauce, mount it with a knob of butter or a little cream, and taste before adding anything.
- The presentation"Dish them in a circle" is a service style of the period: overlapping the paired cutlets around the rim of a hot platter with the sauce pooled in the centre, sometimes with the middle filled with vegetables. It works as well now as it did then.
- YieldReckon one cutlet and one ham slice per person; six pairs make a comfortable circle on a large platter.
Pairing veal with ham is one of the oldest and most persistent alliances in European cookery — veal is lean, mild and short on fat, and cured pork supplies the salt, fat and savour it lacks. The same logic produces saltimbocca, veal cordon bleu, and the raised veal-and-ham pie that was a staple of the British cold table. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, a later revision of the Dictionary of Cookery of the 1870s, was arranged alphabetically and leaned heavily on cross-references, which is why this entry is barely three sentences: it exists to record a variation on a method printed elsewhere in the book, in the manner of a reference work rather than a teaching manual. Veal was then far more common on British tables than it is now, and the instruction to dish food "in a circle" with sauce in the middle reflects the presentation conventions of well-run Victorian households.