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Indian Veal Collops
Mix a small cupful of grated bread-crumbs with a dessert-spoonful, or rather more, of curry-powder, pepper, and salt. Cut two pounds of veal from the fillet, and make collops of a round shape, about three inches across. Beat them well, and smear them with the yolk of egg. Cover the collops with the bread-crumbs and curry-powder. They should be thickly incrusted with crumbs, and will require to be again saturated with the egg-yolk. Dip them into it this time, and powder well with the breadcrumbs. Fry in plenty of butter, and make a sauce with more butter, a little curry-powder, and some good gravy. Thicken with flour, and add the juice (strained) of a lemon. Boil, and serve round the collops. Time, twenty minutes to fry, Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for an entree.
A Victorian curried schnitzel: veal escalopes double-egged, double-crumbed and shallow-fried, with a quick curry gravy poured around rather than over so the crust stays crisp.
- The collops"Collops" are slices of meat, cut fairly thin, here from the fillet — in Victorian British usage "fillet of veal" generally meant the thick part of the hind leg rather than the loin fillet. Two pounds cut into 3-inch rounds and beaten thin should give roughly eight to ten pieces.
- Beat them wellPound to about a quarter of an inch between sheets of plastic or parchment. Even thickness is the hinge of the dish: uneven collops mean the crust is either pale or burnt by the time the centre is done.
- Dessert-spoonfulA dessert spoon is two teaspoons. That is a mild curry seasoning spread through a cupful of crumbs — period curry blends generally leaned on turmeric, coriander and fenugreek with the heat added separately, so taste yours and adjust.
- The double coatingEgg yolk alone is thick and clings well but sets fast; if it stiffens, loosen with a teaspoon of water. Rest the coated collops fifteen minutes before frying so the crust adheres instead of sliding off in the pan.
- Frying timeThe twenty minutes is most likely the whole batch rather than each piece; the recipe does not say. A quarter-inch collop needs about three minutes a side in butter over medium heat. Veal is safely cooked at 145F (63C), and thin slices held longer than that go dry and stringy.
- Butter and burningPlenty of butter over a crumb coating will brown quickly. Clarified butter, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, holds up better than whole butter at frying heat.
- "Good gravy"This means well-reduced brown veal or beef stock, not the thickened gravy sold in granules. Around half a pint, thickened with a scant tablespoon of flour cooked in the curry butter, gives the right pouring consistency.
- ServingIn Victorian dinner service an entrée was a made dish served in the middle courses, not the centrepiece; this quantity would stretch to perhaps six modest portions, or four as a main dish. Pour the sauce around the collops as directed to keep the crumb crust dry.
This belongs to a long line of Anglo-Indian dishes that entered British cookery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, an arrival usually credited to returning East India Company households. By this period ready-blended commercial "curry powder" was widely sold in Britain, though some cooks still mixed their own. The technique itself is thoroughly European — egg-and-crumbed veal collops are the same idea as a Wiener schnitzel or an escalope panée — and the curry powder is simply folded into the crumbs as a seasoning, which is characteristic of how many Victorian kitchens treated Indian flavours: as an addition to an existing repertoire rather than a cuisine in its own right. The "probable cost, 3s." reflects veal's standing as a comparatively expensive butcher's meat, and "sufficient for an entree" marks it as a made dish for the middle of a formal dinner rather than the centrepiece of a meal.