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Veal Scallops, White
Prepare the scallops as in the recipe VEAL SCALLOPS, FRIED, and fry them in clarified butter, taking care that though thoroughly cooked they do not acquire any colour. Drain them, arrange them in a circle on a dish, pour good white sauce round them, and put cooked celery, cooked artichokes, or fried potatoes in the centre of the dish.
A short entry that assumes you have already read the fried version: "scallops" here are thin slices of veal from the leg or loin, beaten flat, what a modern kitchen calls escalopes or scaloppine. The whole point of this variation is that they must cook through without browning.
- The hinge: no colourKeep the pan at a steady medium — the butter should foam quietly, never hiss or brown. If the fat starts to colour, pull the pan off the heat for a moment; once the veal takes on a crust the dish is no longer "white" and the point of it is lost.
- Cut and thicknessSlice veal leg about 1/4 in thick and pound between plastic wrap to roughly 1/8 in. Even thickness matters more than size, since the cooking window is short.
- TimingAt 1/8 in, escalopes need about 1 to 2 minutes a side, no more. 'Thoroughly cooked' in a book of this date need not imply long cooking; thin slices held on the heat any longer turn grey and dry.
- Clarified butterNot a flourish — plain butter's milk solids brown within a minute or two at this heat. Melt butter gently, skim, and pour off the clear fat, or use ghee.
- Good white sauceRead this as a béchamel or, better here, a velouté made with veal or light chicken stock: 1 oz butter and 1 oz flour to about 1/2 pint liquid, simmered until it coats a spoon, finished with a little cream and lemon. Season it firmly, as the veal itself is deliberately bland.
- The garnish in the centre'Cooked artichokes' most likely means globe artichoke bottoms, trimmed and boiled in acidulated water; jarred or frozen hearts do the same job, though Jerusalem artichokes were also common in kitchens of this date. Celery should be cut into short lengths and braised in stock rather than boiled to collapse.
- AssemblySauce round, not over, so the veal stays visible and does not steam. Warm the dish first — thin escalopes lose heat fast.
- YieldAllow 2 escalopes, about 5 oz of veal, per person; the quantity of sauce above serves four to six.
Cassell's places this among a run of veal scallop variations because veal was the standard "white" meat of the nineteenth-century English kitchen: pale, mild, and prized for dishes where the cook wanted no browning at all. The technique of frying without colour is the same discipline behind a blanquette or a fricassée, and it is one reason clarified butter appears so often in Victorian instructions. Milk-fed veal of the kind these books assume is now uncommon and expensive in most markets; rose veal, slightly darker, will colour a little faster and needs closer watching.