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Veal Scallops, Fried
Take about two pounds of veal from the fillet. Trim away the fat, gristle, and skin, and cut the lean into rounds half an inch thick and the size of a crown piece. Flatten these with the cutlet-bat, and season them with a little pepper and salt. Butter the frying-pan thickly, put in the scallops side by side, and fry them till brightly browned on both sides. Take them up, and keep them hot in the oven till the sauce is ready. Dredge a table-spoonful of flour into the fat in the frying-pan, stir for a minute, and moisten the paste with three-quarters of a pint of stock. Let it boil, and pour into it the gravy which has come from the scallops. Stir into the sauce a table-spoonful of chopped parsley. Take it from the fire, dissolve a slice of fresh butter in it, pour it over the veal, and serve. Time, eight to ten minutes to fry the scallops.
A plain pan-fry with a flour gravy built in the same pan. The only real trap is the stated frying time, which will overcook meat pounded this thin.
- Eight to ten minutes is the total, not per sideHalf-inch rounds flattened with a bat cook through in about two to three minutes a side over medium-high heat. Read the instruction as the whole operation, and pull them when the second side is browned.
- "The size of a crown piece"A crown coin is about 1.5 inches across, so these are small medallions rather than escalopes. Cutting them larger works, but expect fewer of them and slightly longer cooking.
- "Fillet" of vealIn British usage of this period the fillet is the leg, roughly what a butcher now sells as top round or cushion, not tenderloin. Any lean solid muscle from the leg is right.
- Cutlet-batA meat mallet or the flat of a heavy pan. Work between sheets of parchment or plastic so the edges do not tear.
- Buttering the pan thicklyWhole butter at browning heat will scorch and darken the later roux. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a little neutral oil, gives the same flavour without the burnt milk solids.
- Three-quarters of a pint of stockAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is 15 fl oz, a little under two US cups. One tablespoon of flour to that much liquid gives a thin pouring gravy rather than a coating sauce; reduce it a few minutes, or use half the stock, if you want body.
- Keeping them hotAn oven at 200F, loosely covered, holds the medallions for the few minutes the sauce takes. Rest them over a plate so the juices they release can be poured back in as directed.
- The butter finishThe pan must be off the heat before the final slice of butter goes in, as the recipe says. Boiling after that point splits the emulsion and the sauce turns greasy.
- YieldTwo pounds of trimmed veal serves four generously, or six as part of a larger meal.
"Scallop" here has nothing to do with the shellfish as an ingredient; it is the older culinary sense of a thin round slice, the same word behind the French escalope, and English cooks used it freely for veal, mutton and even potatoes cut in coins. The instruction to measure a slice of meat against a crown piece belongs to a period when a familiar coin could stand in for a rule.