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Breaded Veal Cutlets with Tomato Sauce
The cutlets should be rather thin. Wipe them and trim off the skin and any stringy pieces of fat. Cut 2 or 3 slices of nice fat salt pork in strips 1/2 inch wide, fry them until crisped, and take out on a paper to drain. To the fat in the pan add a spoonful of beef drippings. Season the cutlets with salt and pepper, crumb them by dipping in beaten egg and then in bread crumbs, and fry in the hot fat until well browned and cooked through, but not too hard. Take them up on a hot platter, and into the pan pour 3/4 of a cup of milk; let it boil, add a half cup of hot strained tomato, and stir briskly. Season with salt and a dash of cayenne, and if the crumbs from the cutlets do not thicken the sauce sufficiently, add a few more, or some cracker flour, and stir till very smooth. Pour around the cutlets, and, if liked, lay the crisp strips of pork around the edge of the platter.
A straightforward breaded cutlet with a pan sauce built from milk and tomato, thickened by the crumbs left in the skillet. The sauce is where it can go wrong.
- The hinge: deglaze off high heatMilk poured into a screaming-hot pan of pork fat and drippings will break or scorch the browned crumbs. Pull the pan off the burner for a moment, add the milk, then return it to medium heat and let it come up gently before the tomato goes in.
- Cutlet thickness"Rather thin" is not defined in the recipe; somewhere around 1/4 inch is a reasonable reading. Veal scaloppine or top round pounded between plastic wrap to that thickness cooks through in a couple of minutes a side and stays tender; much thicker and it may toughen before the crust is dark enough.
- Salt pork and drippingsFat salt pork is still sold at some butchers; thick-cut unsmoked bacon is the closest common stand-in, though it is cured differently and will read smokier. "Beef drippings" is rendered beef fat saved from a roast — a spoonful of tallow, or simply more of the pork fat, does the job. Season the cutlets lightly, since the fat is already salty.
- Strained tomatoHalf a cup of hot strained tomato means tomato pulp cooked and pushed through a sieve, i.e. passata or a smooth, unseasoned tomato purée. Warm it before it meets the milk to reduce the chance of curdling.
- Cracker flourFinely ground cracker crumbs, used in this period as a general thickener. Plain dry breadcrumbs pulsed fine, or a teaspoon of flour whisked into a little cold milk first, will thicken the sauce the same way.
- DonenessCook veal cutlets to 145F internal. On a piece this thin that arrives at the same moment the crust browns, so judge by colour and do not hold them in the pan waiting.
- Yield and holdingThe recipe gives no yield; the quantity of sauce would suit roughly four thin cutlets. Keep the browned cutlets on a platter in a 200F oven while the sauce comes together — it takes only a couple of minutes.