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Sauce for Veal Cutlets
Two tablespoons of dripping, one-quarter cup of flour, one pint of stock or water and stock, one teaspoon or more of Worcestershire, two tablespoons of chopped parsley, one-half teaspoon of salt, one-eighth teaspoon of pepper. Prepare as a brown sauce, pour over cutlets and cook at low temperature for one hour, or until tender. - Mrs B. M. Chadbourn.
A plain brown gravy built on pan drippings, meant to braise the cutlets rather than merely coat them. The hinge is browning the roux properly before any liquid goes in.
- DrippingThe rendered fat left in the pan after frying the cutlets, beef or pork fat from a jar being the period alternative. Butter or a neutral oil works, but the fat from the veal itself carries the most flavour.
- Make it a real brown sauceCook the flour in the fat over medium heat, stirring, until it smells nutty and colours to the shade of peanut butter, four to six minutes. Skipping this leaves the sauce pale and pasty; the flour is a quarter cup to a pint of liquid, which is a thick binding and needs the toasting to taste of anything.
- StockA pint is two cups. Veal or beef stock is right; if using commercial stock, hold back the half teaspoon of salt until the sauce has reduced and taste at the end.
- "Low temperature for one hour"The recipe gives no figure and does not say oven or stovetop. A bare stovetop simmer in a covered pan answers the description; if you use the oven, a low setting in a covered dish. An hour at that heat suits cutlets with connective tissue to soften.
- Which cutletsThin milk-fed scallopini cooked for an hour will turn to string. This treatment suits thicker cutlets from the shoulder or leg, roughly half an inch, of the kind sold for schnitzel or braising.
- ParsleyTwo tablespoons stirred in at the start will go drab over an hour. Add half at the beginning for depth and the rest in the last few minutes for colour.
- YieldStarts from a pint of liquid and will reduce over the hour; the recipe gives no serving count.
Signed contributions like Mrs B. M. Chadbourn's were a common feature of the period's magazine and community recipe collections. The sauce is a simplified household brown sauce -- fat, flour, stock, and a bottled seasoning -- with Worcestershire standing in for the long-simmered aromatics of a restaurant espagnole; a commercially bottled sauce was a respectable shortcut in this period rather than a confession.