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Veal Chops, Broiled in Paper
Take the chops from the neck, remove the chine-bone, gristle, and skin, and fry gently in a little butter. Prepare for each chop a piece of doubled stiff white paper sufficiently large to leave a margin an inch and a half wide round the chop. Butter this well, lay on it a thin slice of bacon, a spoonful of thick white sauce, the cutlet, another spoonful of sauce, and a second slice of bacon; double down the edges of the paper securely. Lay the chops on a gridiron, and place this at a considerable height above a clear fire. Let them broil gently, and turn frequently. Serve on a hot dish in the papers. Garnish with sliced lemon. Time to broil, fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient, two pounds of chops for four persons.
This is veal en papillote under an English name, and it works well on a gas or charcoal grill or in the oven. The hinge is the paper: it has to be greased and folded tightly enough to hold the sauce and the steam, and it has to be kept well away from direct flame or it chars through.
- The paper"Stiff white paper" means unwaxed, uncoated kitchen paper; use baking parchment, doubled, and butter it generously. Do not substitute foil if you want the original effect, since foil conducts heat and the point of the paper is to insulate while trapping steam.
- Neck chopsVeal neck chops with the chine (backbone) removed are a butcher's request now; loin or rib chops about 3/4 inch thick work in their place. Two pounds for four people, as the original states, is generous by modern portioning.
- The preliminary fryThe chops are fried "gently" only to set the surface and start the fat, not to cook through. Two to three minutes a side in butter over medium heat is enough; they finish inside the paper.
- Thick white sauceA béchamel stiff enough to sit on a spoon without running, cooled slightly before it goes on the paper. A thin sauce will soak the parcel and leak.
- "A considerable height above a clear fire"A clear fire is one burnt down to embers with no flame or smoke, and the gridiron sat high above it means gentle, indirect heat. On a covered grill, cook over the cool side; in the oven, 400F on a baking sheet, no turning needed.
- Timing and donenessFifteen minutes with frequent turning suits thin chops that were already part-cooked in the pan. Judge by the meat rather than the clock: veal chops are done at 145F at the bone, and neck chops that go much past that turn dry and stringy inside the parcel.
- BaconVictorian bacon was generally more heavily cured and fatter than most modern supermarket rashers. Choose streaky bacon or pancetta, sliced thin, so it renders into the sauce rather than sitting in a hard strip.
- ServingThe parcels go to table closed and are opened at the plate, which is the whole appeal, as the trapped aroma is released at the last moment. The lemon is not decoration alone; the acid cuts the butter, bacon and béchamel.
Cooking in a buttered paper case is a French technique, en papillote, the word meaning a twist or curl of paper of the kind once used for hair curlers and sweet wrappers. English cookery books of the nineteenth century adopted it for chops and cutlets because it solved a real problem of the open coal range: meat broiled over a fire lost its juices to the fire, while meat wrapped in greased paper kept them, and the paper also kept smuts off pale-coloured meat like veal. The note of "probable cost, 1s. per pound" is characteristic of the book's readership: middle-class households running on a fixed weekly allowance, for whom the cheaper neck end of the veal, dressed up with bacon and sauce and served in its own paper, was a way of making an economical cut look deliberate.