Cutlets à la Vénétienne

The book gives quantities only; the method was carried in the surrounding text and in the reader's training. What follows fills in the assumptions a cook of 1900 would have brought to it.

• What the dish actually isThe recipe gives no method at all, so this has to be inferred. The ingredient list matches a pattern common in period cookery: trimmed cutlets masked on one side with quenelle forcemeat mixed with the chopped tongue and truffle, then set by gentle heat so the farce firms without colouring, and the brown sauce sent round the dish rather than over it so the decorated face stays visible.
• Best end of neckThis is the rack — the rib section behind the shoulder. Three pounds yields roughly six to eight cutlets once the bones are scraped clean and the meat trimmed, so the recipe serves about six as an entrée in the older sense of a small made dish between courses.
• Mutton versus lambMutton is usually reckoned as sheep over about two years old, stronger and firmer than lamb; in Britain it now tends to come from specialist butchers, though it remains everyday meat in many other countries. A rack of lamb substitutes directly; expect a milder result and shorter cooking, since mutton takes noticeably longer to become tender.
• Quenelle meatSix ounces of the book's forcemeat — pounded veal or chicken bound with a panada and cream or egg, sieved smooth. Any fine mousseline farce serves the same purpose. It must be stiff enough to hold its shape on the cutlet and should be seasoned before the tongue and truffle go in, as those add salt of their own.
• TongueAlmost certainly cooked, brined ox tongue, chopped small, though the recipe says only 'Tongue' — it is there for colour and salt as much as flavour. Good cooked tongue from a deli counter works; unsalted tongue will leave the farce flat.
• Brown sauceThree-quarters of a pint is 15 imperial fluid ounces, about two US cups. In a book of this class the phrase means espagnole or a demi-glace built on brown stock, not a flour-thickened gravy. A well-reduced veal or lamb stock sauce is the closest modern equivalent.
• TrufflesTwo tablespoons of chopped truffle was an unremarkable garnish in a Victorian professional kitchen and is now the most expensive line in the list. Preserved truffle peelings, or finely chopped sautéed mushrooms with a little truffle oil, keep the visual effect without the outlay.
• The point to watchThe farce coating must be cooked through by gentle heat; harsh or fast heat splits and dries it. The cutlets themselves are conventionally served pink, so the two elements have to be judged against each other — bearing in mind that the forcemeat, not the mutton, sets the minimum.