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Bread-crumbs (Trim the cutlets into a round)
One pound of Veal Cutlets. Parsley and Thyme. One ounce of Butter. One teaspoonful of Lemon-juice. Trim the cutlets into a round shape, and beat them to half an inch in thickness with a cutlet-bat; chop up the thyme (which, when chopped, should fill a saltspoon), also the parsley. Melt the butter, add to it the chopped parsley, thyme, lemon-juice, and a little grated lemon-rind, one egg, pepper and salt to taste, and beat it all up together with a knife. Dip each cutlet into the plate and cover them all over with the mixture; then cover them with bread-crumbs and press the crumbs firmly on with a palette-knife. Fry the cutlets for ten minutes; dish in a circle on mashed potatoes, and serve with rolls of bacon in the centre and brown sauce poured round.
A late-Victorian breaded cutlet, given in the clipped style of a cookery-school demonstration: the quantities lived in a heading that this page does not repeat, so treat the method as the recipe and scale the coating to the meat.
- What the quantities probably areThe page carries none; only "one egg" and "a saltspoon" of chopped thyme come from the text. As a rough working guide for a dish of cutlets: about 2 oz (4 tbsp) butter, 1 tbsp chopped parsley, a saltspoon of thyme, the juice of half a lemon, one egg. A saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon.
- The hinge: chill the coated cutletsChilling helps -- The butter-and-egg paste is what holds the crumbs, and it firms up when cold. Coat, crumb and press firmly with the palette-knife as directed; half an hour in the refrigerator before frying will help the coating stay put, though the recipe does not call for it.
- Cutlet-batA heavy flat mallet, often dipped in water to stop sticking. A meat mallet or the base of a small pan does the same job; work from the centre out to half an inch, no thinner.
- "Fry" means shallow-fry"Fry" is unspecified -- The recipe does not say how much fat or how deep; either shallow-frying in a pan or frying in deeper fat would suit crumbed cutlets. Use a fat that will take ten minutes over moderate heat, such as clarified butter or lard, as plain butter will darken well before the time is up.
- Ten minutes, and the thermometerHalf-inch cutlets turned once take roughly 4-5 minutes a side, which is where the ten comes from. For whole cuts of either lamb or veal, 145F with a three-minute rest is the usual modern target; browning of the crumbs is not a doneness test.
- Rolls of baconThin rashers, rind off, rolled tight and either threaded on a skewer and grilled or baked at 400F until crisp. They go in the centre of the ring as a garnish, not underneath the cutlets.
- Brown sauceHere this means espagnole or a reduced meat gravy, not bottled brown sauce. A well-reduced stock finished with a little butter is the honest modern equivalent, and it should be poured around the base, never over the crumbs.
- YieldThe page gives none. Two cutlets a person is a reasonable modern main-course portion; one would suit service as an entree in the older sense, a course between fish and roast.
The breaded, egg-washed cutlet arranged in a ring on mashed or duchesse potato was one of the standard entrees of the Anglo-French repertoire taught in English cookery schools from the later nineteenth century onward. The word entree here carries its older meaning: a made dish served before the roast, expected to be composed and garnished rather than simply plated. The recipe never names the meat; lamb or veal cutlets are the likeliest intention.