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Veal Cutlets, Russian Mode of Cooking
Make a little Russian sauce in a quantity sufficient to coat the cutlets, upon one side only, to the thickness of half an inch. This sauce may be made in the following proportions. Dissolve an ounce of butter in a small sauce-pan, and put with it a stick of horse-radish, grated, a finely-minced shallot, a pinch of powdered herbs, a spoonful of grated ham, a table-spoonful of vinegar, a table-spoonful of sherry, a small lump of sugar, and a little pepper and salt. Cover the saucepan closely, and let its contents simmer gently over a slow fire till the flavour of the ingredients is extracted. Add a quarter of a pint of rich white sauce, and the well-beaten yolks of two eggs. Stir the sauce over a gentle fire till it begins to thicken, then strain it off for use. Trim the cutlets, flatten them with a cutlet-bat, and fry on both sides to a light brown. They will require about twelve minutes. Let them get cold, then spread a coating of the Russian sauce upon one side of each. Brush them over with egg, and sprinkle upon them fried bread-crumbs mixed with grated Parmesan. Place them side by side in a single layer in a buttered baking-dish, and a few minutes before they are to be served heat them in a brisk oven. Dish them in a circle on a hot dish, pour a little tomato sauce into the centre, and serve very hot. Any kind of cooked vegetable may be served as an accompaniment. Time to heat the cutlets, about ten minutes.
A two-stage dish: fried cutlets are cooled, masked with a horseradish sauce, crumbed and reheated. The sauce is the whole point, and it is an egg-yolk liaison, so it dictates the pace of the work.
- Never let the sauce boilOnce the two yolks go in, hold the pan below a simmer and stir constantly until it coats the spoon. A moment at boiling point and the yolks scramble, after which straining will not save it.
- Quantities in modern termsA quarter of a pint is 5 fl oz, or about two-thirds of a cup, of rich white sauce -- a béchamel made with a little cream. An ounce of butter is 2 tablespoons. A "stick" of horse-radish means a piece of the fresh root; how much grated horseradish that gives depends entirely on the size of the piece, so judge it by taste. Jarred horseradish in vinegar is a poor substitute here because the recipe already carries its own vinegar.
- Powdered herbsPeriod cookery books call for a powder of dried savoury herbs, mixtures of this kind typically running to thyme, marjoram, savory and bay. A pinch of dried mixed herbs, or thyme and marjoram in equal parts, does the job.
- Getting a half-inch coatingA strained, yolk-thickened sauce is pourable when warm and only spreadable when cold. Chill it thoroughly, ideally an hour in the refrigerator, before masking the cutlets; if it still slumps, reduce the white sauce further next time rather than adding flour to this batch.
- Brisk ovenRead that as roughly 400-425F. The cutlets are already cooked through, so the oven is only there to heat them and colour the crumb -- the recipe's ten minutes is enough.
- The frying timeTwelve minutes is long for a cutlet already flattened with the bat. Thin modern veal escalopes will be done in three or four minutes a side, and overcooking at this stage guarantees dry meat after the second trip through the oven.
- Fried bread-crumbsCrumbs tossed in butter until golden before they go on, which is why the short reheat produces a crisp surface. Panko browned in butter behaves the same way. Mix in Parmesan off the heat so it does not catch.
"Russian sauce" in nineteenth-century English cookery books often meant a sauce built on grated horseradish, the flavouring most firmly associated with Russia in the Victorian imagination, often sharpened with vinegar and enriched with cream or egg, though usage varied. It has little to do with the later French sauce russe of mayonnaise and caviar, and nothing at all to do with Russian salad dressings of the twentieth century. Cassell's, compiled as an alphabetical dictionary rather than a personal collection, gathered dozens of such national labels -- Russian, Polish, Italian, Flemish -- as shorthand for a flavour profile a British cook could reproduce from a normal larder. The method itself is thoroughly French: cook, cool, mask with a stiff sauce, crumb, and reheat, the same logic behind the whole family of croquette preparations. It suited a household kitchen where the frying and saucing could be done in the morning and the dish finished in ten minutes when the dining room was ready.