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Wiener Schnitzel (Viennese Veal Cutlets)
Beat up an egg and well soak some veal cutlets in it; dip them in bread crumbs and fry them in butter on both sides. As soon as they are cooked take them out, drain and lay them round a dish, place some grated horseradish and chopped anchovies in the centre, and serve with a sauce "demiglace." The "sauce demiglace" is made as follows: Take the trimmings of the veal, put them in a saucepan with a little stock, onions, carrots, and a bouquet of herbs. Let all simmer together until the meat is in rags. Skim often. Pass all through a sieve, and clarify with the white of an egg well beaten. Strain again and place over the fire until the sauce is sufficiently thick. Serve with the cutlets.
A late-Victorian English rendering of Vienna's most famous dish, served here with a garnish of horseradish and anchovy and a stock-based sauce rather than the lemon wedge that became standard. The cutlets themselves take minutes; the sauce is an afternoon's work and can be started first or replaced.
- The cutletUse veal leg or top round cut across the grain and pounded between sheets of plastic to about 1/4 inch, or thinner. Even thickness matters more than any other single step: a thick cutlet forces you to keep it in the pan long enough to toughen the meat and darken the crumbs.
- Flour firstThe recipe goes straight from egg to crumbs. A light dusting of flour before the egg gives the coating something to grip and is worth adding, though the crust will still work without it.
- Butter that will not burnWhole butter over the heat needed here browns and speckles the coating. Use clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, and keep the fat at about 340-350F. Enough fat that the cutlet floats slightly lets the crumb coat puff away from the meat, which is the mark of the dish done well.
- TimingAbout 90 seconds to two minutes a side for a properly thinned cutlet. Veal this thin is cooked through by the time the crumbs are deep gold; anything longer dries it.
- DrainingDrain on a rack rather than paper so the underside crust does not steam soft, and crumb and fry in batches so the pan temperature does not drop.
- The "sauce demiglace"This is not the classical demi-glace of espagnole and brown stock, but a reduced and clarified veal broth. Brown the trimmings and vegetables first for colour and depth, simmer two to three hours, skim as directed, then strain and reduce. The egg-white clarification is optional if you strain carefully through a cloth.
- Bouquet of herbsRead as a bouquet garni: parsley stems, thyme and a bay leaf, tied or bagged so it lifts out cleanly.
- Yield and servingFigure one 5-6 oz cutlet per person. Grate the horseradish fresh at the last moment; jarred horseradish is packed in vinegar and will read more acidic and less pungent. Chopped anchovy fillets, rinsed and patted dry, are enough for the centre of the dish.
Wiener Schnitzel is simply "Viennese cutlet," and the crumbed veal escalope became identified with Vienna over the nineteenth century; breaded fried veal appears in Austrian cookbooks of the period, and the treatment is often said to follow that of Backhendl. The often-repeated story that Field Marshal Radetzky carried it back from Milan, where cotoletta alla milanese was already established, is traditional rather than documented and is generally treated with scepticism by food historians. What is interesting in this English version is the garnish: grated horseradish and chopped anchovies with a reduced veal sauce, rather than the lemon that became standard.