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VEAL CUTLETS (a la Financiere)
Take the best end of a neck of veal. Saw off the chine-bone and the rib-bones so as to make the cutlets about three inches long, and divide the meat into cutlets of an even thickness. Trim them neatly, flatten them with a wooden bat, and lard, through the lean part, evenly and closely with quarter-inch strips of fat bacon. Line the bottom of a small stewpan with sliced carrot, onion, and celery, and add a bunch of herbs and an onion stuck with six cloves. Lay the cutlets upon the vegetables, pour upon them as much stock or water as will barely touch the surface of the veal, and cover the meat with a round of oiled paper. Place the stewpan on a gentle fire, and let its contents simmer as gently as possible till the cutlets are tender. Baste frequently with the liquor in the pan. Take up the cutlets, and put them on a dish with the larded side uppermost. Strain the stock in which they were stewed. Thicken with a little piece of brown thickening. Let it simmer by the side of the fire that it may throw up the grease, which should be carefully removed. Stir into the sauce a wine-glassful of ketchup, a wine-glassful of sherry or Madeira, and a pinch of cayenne. Pour the sauce round the veal cutlets, and serve very hot. Stewed mushrooms, or truffles, or different kinds of cooked vegetables, may be served with this dish. Time to simmer the cutlets, about an hour and a half. Probable cost, veal, 1s. to 1s. 2d. per pound.
A shallow braise rather than a fry: the cutlets sit on an aromatic bed with barely enough liquid to touch them, so they steam and baste at once. Two details carry the dish — the liquid must never reach a real boil, and the strained cooking liquor must be properly degreased before the wine goes in.
- The cut"Best end of neck" is the rack, the same primal that gives rib chops; sawing off the chine and shortening the ribs to three inches is close to what a butcher now calls French-trimming. The recipe fixes neither number nor thickness: bone-in veal rib chops, or loin chops, cut to an even thickness will do.
- LardingThreading quarter-inch strips of fat bacon through the lean with a larding needle compensates for veal's near-total lack of intramuscular fat. Without a larding needle, lay thin sheets of back fat or unsmoked streaky bacon over the top and tie them on; the effect on moisture is similar, though the striped surface the recipe wants is lost.
- Oiled paperA round of paper cut to the pan and rubbed with oil is a cartouche. Parchment does the job: press it directly onto the meat so the little liquid in the pan circulates as steam rather than escaping.
- "As gently as possible"Hold the liquid at 180-190F, with barely a tremble at the edge. A rolling simmer squeezes veal into dry fibres, which is exactly what the frequent basting is meant to prevent.
- Ninety minutes is for older meatNinety minutes may be long for modern meat -- the recipe allows about an hour and a half. Modern veal rib chops may be tender well before that; test with a skewer rather than the clock, and stop when it slides in without resistance.
- Brown thickeningA cooked brown roux, kept ready in the Victorian kitchen as a paste of flour browned in butter or dripping. Whisk a tablespoon each of flour and butter, cooked together to a nut colour, into the strained liquor.
- Ketchup and wine measuresA wine-glassful is generally reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so roughly 1/4 cup each of ketchup and sherry or Madeira. The ketchup meant is almost certainly mushroom or walnut ketchup, thin, dark and salty hat quantity of tomato ketchup would make the sauce sweet and pink. Use mushroom ketchup, or substitute a scant tablespoon of soy plus extra stock.
- DegreasingDrawing the pan half off the heat so the fat collects on the cooler side is the old trick and still works; skimming is easier if you chill the strained liquor briefly. With larded cutlets there will be a good deal of bacon fat to remove, and the sauce is dull if it stays in.
- Yield and garnishThe recipe gives no yield; four cutlets is a reasonable dinner portion. The financiere garnish traditionally ran wider than mushrooms and truffles, but those are what the last line offers; sauteed button mushrooms with a little of the sauce stirred through are the practical version.
Financière was one of the standardised garnishes of nineteenth-century French service — cockscombs, kidneys, truffles, mushrooms and olives bound in a Madeira-scented sauce, the name generally taken as a joke about the expense of truffles, the food of financiers. By the time Cassell's was compiling its dictionary for British households in the 1870s and after, the label had loosened considerably: what survives here is the Madeira or sherry, the mushrooms or truffles as an optional extra, and a good deal of mushroom ketchup doing the work that a long-reduced demi-glace would have done in a professional kitchen. The larding is the period's standard answer to veal, which was prized for pale, delicate flesh and consequently had almost no fat of its own; needles in several gauges were ordinary batterie de cuisine. Veal at a shilling a pound put this dish squarely in the middle-class dinner rather than the everyday one.