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Pork Cutlets and Onions
Trim the cutlets neatly, sprinkle with pepper, and grill for about five minutes, turning as usual. Then dip them in warmed butter, and coat them with bread-crumbs browned in the oven, with which a pinch of cayenne and of mixed herbs have been mixed. Press these on firmly, then finish the cooking either in a moderate oven, or on the grill, or by frying. Put a ring of fried bread in the middle of the dish, spread it thickly with fried onions, and fill the centre with apple sauce, mixed with a small quantity of rich brown sauce. Dish the cutlets round the bread, and pour a little more apple sauce round the base.
A Victorian pork cutlet dressed in browned crumbs and served round a fried bread croûte. The method is sound; the vocabulary and the doneness standard are what need translating.
- "Grill" means broilIn a British book of this date the grill is an overhead heat source. Use a broiler element or a ridged grill pan; the first five minutes is only to set and colour the surface, not to cook through.
- Cut and thicknessTake rib or loin chops about 3/4 in thick, trimmed of all but a thin rim of fat, or ask for a French-trimmed rack cut into cutlets. Anything thinner will be dry before the crumb coating has taken colour.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockTotal cooking of roughly 12 to 15 minutes after the initial grilling suits a 3/4 in cutlet, depending on your heat. Pull them at 145F/63C at the centre and rest five minutes. Recipes of this date generally cooked pork until no pink remained; that degree of doneness is no longer necessary and produces a wooden cutlet.
- A moderate oven350F/180C. If you finish in the oven, use a rack over a tray so the crumb underneath does not steam.
- Browned bread-crumbsThese are what older books call raspings: dry crumbs spread on a tray and toasted in the oven until biscuit-coloured. They are already cooked, so they brown fast and will scorch under a hot grill. Fry-finishing gives the most even result.
- Warmed butterMelted but not hot, and not browned. Clarified butter is less likely to burn in the second cooking.
- Mixed herbsDried herb mixtures of the period generally drew on thyme, marjoram, savory, sage and parsley in varying proportions. About half a teaspoon per cup of crumbs, with cayenne on the tip of a knife.
- Rich brown sauceAn espagnole or demi-glace. A tablespoon or two stirred into the apple sauce is enough to darken and enrich it; more and the apple disappears. Reduced veal or beef stock, well seasoned, stands in adequately.
- The fried bread croûteCut a round of firm white bread about 1/2 in thick and slightly smaller than the ring of cutlets, and fry it in butter or dripping until crisp on both sides. Assemble at the last moment or it softens under the onions.
- YieldOne or two cutlets a head; four to six cutlets serve four with the onions and sauce.
The arrangement here, meat set in a ring round a fried bread croûte with a garnish heaped in the centre, is the kind of composed dish associated with the later nineteenth century and with service à la russe, where dishes came to the table already arranged rather than being carved by the host. The recipe offers three ways to finish the cutlets: whichever the kitchen happens to have going. The pairing of pork with apple is much older than the book and is traditionally explained by the orchard and the pig sharing the same autumn calendar, windfalls fattening the animal that was killed at the end of the season, though that is a customary explanation rather than a documented one. Adding brown sauce to the apple reflects the French influence on English cookery in this period.