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Pork Cutlets, with Sauce Robert
Take two pounds of properly trimmed pork cutlets, and lay them in a deep dish. Put a glass of vinegar, a glass of sherry, a bunch of parsley, a small sprig of thyme, two bay-leaves, three shallots, a blade of mace, eight pepper-corns, and two allspice into a saucepan. Let these ingredients boil up, then turn the mixture into a basin, and when quite cold, pour it over the cutlets. Let them lie in the mixture twelve hours, turning them two or three times. When wanted, drain and dry them, egg and bread-crumb them, and broil over a clear fire until they are thoroughly cooked. Serve in a hot dish, and pour half a pint of sauce Robert over them.
A Victorian marinated-and-crumbed pork chop, finished with a mustard-sharpened brown sauce. Two things need translating: the vessel measures, and the instruction to cook the pork "thoroughly".
- A glassAlmost certainly a wineglassful, conventionally reckoned at about 2 fl oz (¼ cup), though period sources vary. On that reading, roughly ¼ cup vinegar and ¼ cup sherry: enough to wet 2 lb of cutlets in a snug dish but not submerge them — hence the direction to turn them.
- Cool the marinade fullyThe boiled aromatics must be cold before they touch the meat, as written. Pouring hot liquid over raw pork both part-cooks the surface and holds it in the danger zone; chill the strained mixture, then marinate in the refrigerator rather than a larder.
- Doneness"Thoroughly cooked" reflects the period habit of cooking pork hard, often explained at the time by fear of parasites, and produces dry, grey pork. Current practice for whole cuts is 145F at the centre with a short rest, which leaves the meat faintly pink and juicy.
- Broil over a clear fireThat is grilling over glowing coals with no flame and no smoke. Egg-and-crumbed cutlets scorch fast over direct heat, so keep them a good hand's width above the coals and turn often; under a domestic broiler, use a middle rack rather than the top slot.
- Blade of maceThe dried outer casing of nutmeg, sold in blades or ground. About ¼ teaspoon ground mace stands in for one blade. Two allspice means two whole berries, not two spoonfuls.
- ShallotsSizes vary widely; a large banana shallot may stand for two or three small ones, so halve the count if yours are big. Bruise rather than chop, since the aromatics are discarded when the cutlets are drained.
- Sauce RobertAn espagnole or brown sauce finished with sweated onion, wine or vinegar and mustard, the mustard stirred in off the heat so it does not turn bitter. Half an Imperial pint is about 1¼ US cups; that is generous for four, and half the quantity serves well.
- YieldTwo pounds of trimmed cutlets feeds four as a main course.
Sauce Robert is one of the oldest named sauces in French cookery, said to appear in print by the sixteenth century and mentioned by Rabelais; it is traditionally credited to a cook named Robert, though the attribution is folklore rather than record. By the time Carême and then Escoffier codified the sauce repertoire it had settled into its familiar form — brown sauce, onion, white wine or vinegar, and mustard — and became the standard partner for pork, whose fat wants an acid, mustardy foil. The marinade here belongs to an older English habit of steeping meat in vinegar and wine with whole spices before grilling, a practice that both flavoured and tenderised pork from animals slaughtered older and worked harder than ours. The recipe brings together three techniques at once: a cooked marinade, an egg-and-crumb coating, and a classical compound sauce.