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VEAL CUTLETS (a la Venitienne)
Cut the best end of a neck of veal into cutlets, trim these in the usual way, and flatten them with the cutlet-bat. Mince finely half a pint of mushrooms, and mix with them two shallots, a handful of parsley, a sprig of thyme, and a little pepper. Dissolve a slice of fresh butter in a saucepan, add a quarter of a pound of fat bacon cut into dice, and the minced herbs, etc. Stew all gently together till the mushrooms are tender; put in the cutlets with as much white stock as will barely cover them, and let all simmer very gently till they are done enough. Add a spoonful of white thickening, and carefully remove the fat as it rises. A few minutes before the veal is to be served add to the sauce the yolk of an egg beaten up with a little cream. Mix in a table-spoonful of strained lemon-juice and a pinch of cayenne. Place the cutlets on a dish, pour the sauce into the centre, and serve very hot. Send tomatoes, or any cooked vegetables, to table as an accompaniment. Time, about three-quarters of an hour to stew the cutlets. Probable cost, 1s. per pound.
A gently braised veal cutlet finished with an egg-and-cream liaison. The whole dish turns on the last step: once the yolk goes in, the sauce must not boil.
- The hinge: the liaisonBeat the yolk with the cream, temper it with a ladle of the hot cooking liquid, then stir it back into the pan off the heat or over the barest flame. If it reaches a simmer the yolk scrambles and the sauce breaks into grains.
- Half a pint of mushroomsAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz (about 285 ml) measured by volume; mushrooms are light, so this is more like 3-4 oz (roughly 100 g) by weight. Ordinary cremini or button work; the original would probably have used field mushrooms, which tend to give more colour and depth.
- White thickeningA pale butter-and-flour thickening, used much as a blond roux or beurre manie: butter and flour cooked without colouring. The recipe calls for a spoonful, so reckon on about a couple of teaspoons each of butter and flour. Whisk it in in small pieces and let the sauce simmer a minute or two before the yolk goes anywhere near it.
- Fat baconA quarter pound (115 g) of unsmoked fatback or salt pork, diced. Modern smoked streaky bacon will dominate a delicate white sauce; if that is all you have, blanch it first and use less.
- Cutlet-batA heavy flat bat used to beat cutlets out thin; a meat mallet stands in. Flatten them enough to cook evenly, but leave them thick enough to survive three-quarters of an hour of stewing.
- Timing and donenessForty-five minutes at a bare simmer suits bone-in neck cutlets. Modern boneless veal loin or leg cutlets are leaner and will be dry well before then; check at 20 minutes and pull them out to rest while you finish the sauce.
- Neck of vealRarely on display but easy to order; ask the butcher for the best end of neck, cut into chops. Veal rib chops are the closest supermarket equivalent.
- YieldTwo cutlets per person, so a best end cut into six to eight serves three or four. Lemon and cayenne go in at the very end, after the yolk; the recipe specifies a tablespoonful of strained lemon-juice and a pinch of cayenne, which you can adjust to taste.
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French kitchens attached place-names to sauces with more enthusiasm than consistency, and "a la Venitienne" is among the vaguer: in the classic French repertoire it generally denotes a pale sauce sharpened with vinegar or lemon and green with chopped herbs, and it has little demonstrable connection to Venice. Cassell's, compiled for British middle-class households in the 1870s and reissued for decades after, collected dozens of such French dressings and rendered them in workable English terms -- here the herbs, mushrooms, lemon and egg liaison of the classic style, applied to a cut of veal cheap enough for the book to quote at a shilling a pound. The egg-yolk-and-cream finish is the old liaison, a standard nineteenth-century method for enriching a white sauce.