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VEAL COLLOPS (Scotch)
No. 1.--Cut the veal into small round collops half an inch thick and about three inches across. Beat them with a cutlet-bat to flatten them, and sprinkle upon them salt, white pepper, and grated nutmeg, or, if preferred, dip them in egg and seasoned bread-crumbs. Dissolve a slice of fresh butter in a saucepan over a gentle fire. Fry the collops in this till they are equally and lightly browned. Drain them, lift them into a hot dish, and pour over them a little good brown sauce seasoned rather highly, and flavoured with lemon-juice. Serve very hot with thin slices of bacon round the dish. Time to fry the collops, about four minutes. No. 2.--Fry the collops as above. Lift them upon a hot dish before the fire. Dissolve a slice of fresh butter in the saucepan, and as it melts mix a table-spoonful of flour smoothly with it. Stir it for two or three minutes, then add gradually as much stock made from bones as will make the sauce of the consistency of cream. Put in also an anchovy and half a dozen button mushrooms chopped small. Let the sauce simmer for ten minutes, then add a little salt and white pepper, a pinch of grated nutmeg, and the fried collops. Let them simmer without boiling for ten or fifteen minutes, and serve them in a hot dish with the gravy poured over, and toasted bacon round them. Time, four minutes to fry the collops, ten minutes to simmer them in the gravy. Probable cost, veal, 1s. per pound.
Two versions of the same dish: a plain fried cutlet with a sauce poured over, and a fricassee-style version where the meat finishes in the sauce. Both hinge on keeping the veal thin and the heat low.
- The cut"Collops" here means small escalopes, best taken from the leg (topside or cushion) or a boned loin. Cut across the grain, then flatten to an even thickness so the four-minute fry cooks them through without drying the edges.
- Cutlet-batA flat, heavy beater, usually metal though wooden ones were also used. A meat mallet or the base of a small pan does the same job; work between two sheets of plastic to avoid tearing the fibres.
- "A slice of fresh butter"A vague Victorian measure meaning roughly 1 to 2 oz (30-55 g). In No. 2 it is the fat for the roux, so match it to the tablespoon of flour: about 1 oz is right.
- Brown sauceHere this means a made brown sauce -- espagnole or a well-reduced brown stock sauce -- not bottled brown sauce. A reduced veal or beef stock thickened lightly, sharpened with lemon, gives the intended effect.
- The anchovyAn "anchovy" in this period was generally a whole salted fish from a barrel, saltier and larger than a modern tinned fillet. Two oil-packed fillets or a teaspoon of anchovy paste is roughly the equivalent; season the sauce only after it has melted in.
- Simmer without boilingThe instruction that matters. Veal escalopes toughen and squeeze out moisture above a bare simmer, and ten to fifteen minutes at a rolling boil would ruin them. Keep the sauce trembling, not bubbling.
- The bacon"Toasted bacon" means thin rashers grilled crisp and laid around the rim as a garnish, not cooked with the veal.
- YieldNot stated. Allow about 6 oz of veal per person; a pound of trimmed leg gives two generous or three modest servings.
- The costing"1s. per pound" is the shilling price of the period, included so a cook could budget the dish. It carries no useful information for a modern shopper.
Collop is an old word, current in English and Scots from the medieval period, for a slice of meat cut for frying, and it is remembered in Collop Monday, the day before Shrove Tuesday, when the household ate up its meat before Lent. The dish is labelled Scotch here, though the recipe itself is thoroughly Anglo-French: butter frying, a flour-and-stock sauce, anchovy and mushroom for depth. Nutmeg with veal is an older survival, a habit of seasoning white meats with sweet spices that runs back through eighteenth-century cookery, and the anchovy does the work that bottled fish sauces did in Victorian brown gravies.