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Pork Cutlets, Fried
Pork cutlets may be fried according to the directions given for pork chops, or as follows. Melt two ounces of butter in a saucepan, and stir into it a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, a tea-spoonful of chopped sage, and a tea-spoonful of finely-minced shallot. Move these ingredients about for a minute, then add a little salt and pepper and two eggs well beaten. Dip the cutlets first into this mixture, then into finely-grated bread-crumbs, and let them stand ten minutes. Melt a little butter in the frying-pan, fry the cutlets in it, and when done enough, serve with good brown sauce in a tureen. Time to fry, fifteen to eighteen minutes. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient, one pound for two or three persons.
A straightforward crumbed cutlet, distinguished only by the herbed egg wash that stands in for plain beaten egg. Two details in the original will trip up a modern cook: the temperature of that wash, and the length of the frying.
- Cool the egg mixture firstThe butter, herbs and shallot are warmed in a saucepan, but the eggs must go in off the heat and into butter that is barely warm. Beaten eggs stirred into hot butter scramble on contact and will not coat anything.
- Brown the shallot barely at all"Move these ingredients about for a minute" means softening, not colouring. Browned shallot and sage in the coating will scorch again in the frying pan and turn bitter.
- Bread-crumbs"Finely-grated bread-crumbs" here are dried crumbs made from stale bread grated small — closer to fine dry breadcrumbs than to fresh or panko. Fresh crumbs absorb more butter and brown unevenly.
- The ten-minute rest is not optionalIt lets the coating set so it stays on the meat in the pan. Chilling the crumbed cutlets for that period works better still.
- Frying timeFifteen to eighteen minutes is long by modern standards; period directions for pork generally err well on the side of thorough cooking. Modern pork is safe at an internal 145F (63C) with a three-minute rest; a cutlet of ordinary thickness reaches that in well under ten minutes, and longer only dries it out and darkens the crumb.
- Pan heatButter alone at high heat will burn before the meat is through. Keep the pan at a steady moderate heat, or add a spoonful of neutral oil to the butter to raise its tolerance.
- Good brown sauceA brown roux thinned with stock and reduced, in the espagnole family; Cassell's gives its own brown sauce directions elsewhere in the dictionary. A well-made stock-based pan gravy, deglazing the frying pan, serves the same purpose.
- Quantities and yieldTwo ounces of butter is about 4 tablespoons (55 g); the recipe reckons one pound of cutlets for two or three people. The probable cost of 1s. per pound is late-Victorian pricing and of historical interest only.
Cassell's belongs to the great age of English dictionary-format cookbooks, arranged alphabetically and cross-referring rather than repeating itself — hence the opening line sending the reader to the pork chop directions. The herb combination is entirely conventional for pork in nineteenth-century English cooking: sage and onion, in one form or another, was the standard accompaniment, and folding sage, parsley and shallot into the egg wash simply moves the seasoning into the crust instead of serving it alongside as stuffing or sauce. The stated cost of a shilling a pound is of its period and of historical interest only. The instruction to serve the brown sauce separately in a tureen, rather than poured over, follows long-established English table practice and keeps the crumbed surface crisp.