Minuten Fleisch
1 1/2 lbs. veal cut in thin slices Salt and pepper 2/3 cup claret wine Flour 1 1/3 cups Brown Stock Juice 1 lemon 2 sprigs parsley Pound veal until one-fourth inch thick and cut in pieces for serving. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, put in baking-pan, pour over wine, and let stand thirty minutes. Drain, dip in flour, arrange in two buttered pans, and pour over remaining ingredients and wine which was drained from meat. Cover, and cook slowly until meat is tender. Remove to serving dish and pour over sauce remaining in pan.
A wine-marinated veal cutlet dish that reads like a braise but is built on slices pounded thin enough to cook in a few minutes. The times need attention more than anything else.
- Do not overcook itVeal pounded to a quarter inch is done in five to ten minutes of gentle cooking; "until meat is tender" was written for tougher, thicker cuts and will turn these slices dry and stringy. Cook covered just until the meat is opaque through and yielding to a fork.
- Cut and thicknessUse veal cutlets or scallops from the leg. Pound between sheets of plastic or parchment to an even quarter inch, working from the centre out so the edges do not tear.
- ClaretNineteenth- and early twentieth-century American books use "claret" for dry red Bordeaux, or any dry red of that character. Two-thirds cup is about 160 ml; a Cabernet or Merlot blend is the closest match.
- Brown stockA dark veal or beef stock, made from roasted bones. Use unsalted or low-sodium stock, since the pan liquid reduces and the meat is already salted.
- "Two buttered pans"The recipe does not say why; most likely it is a matter of fitting the slices in a single layer without crowding. One wide covered sauté pan or a shallow baking dish with a lid will hold the same quantity.
- Stovetop or ovenNo oven temperature is given. Cook covered over low heat on the stovetop, or in a 325F oven; either way the liquid should barely tremble rather than boil.
- Lemon and parsleyA whole lemon's juice is assertive against 1 1/3 cups of stock. Add half, taste the finished sauce, and adjust. The parsley goes in as sprigs and should be lifted out before serving.
- Finishing the sauceLift the meat out and reduce the pan liquid briefly if it is thin; the flour coating gives only light body. A knob of cold butter swirled in at the end pulls it together.
- Yield1 1/2 lb of veal serves four as a main course with potatoes or noodles to catch the sauce.
The name is German — Minutenfleisch, "minute meat" — used for thin slices of veal or beef cut for fast pan cooking, the same idea as the English "minute steak." American household cookbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries borrowed continental dish names freely, and here a dish named for speed carries a half-hour wine marinade and slow covered cooking, though why the two were combined is not recorded. Veal appeared far more often in the cookery writing of that generation than it does now — a by-product of dairy farming, which produced male calves in quantity — and books of this kind gave it considerable space, from breaded schnitzel-style preparations to fricassees and jellied loaves.