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Thyme, Marjoram, Parsley and Bayleaf
Three gills of Stock, and a little Glaze.
Trim the cutlets neatly, and lard them with thin strips of bacon about one inch long on the lean part with about eight pieces to each cutlet.
Butter a braising-pan, and put the carrot, turnip, and onions, sliced, into it, also the bunch of herbs and the trimmings of bacon. Place the cutlets on the top of these, arranging them in a circle, with the bone ends pointing to the middle of the pan. Cover the cutlets over with a buttered paper, and fry them gently for about ten minutes; then pour three gills of stock in at the side of the pan, and let them cook steadily for about three-quarters of an hour over a slow fire or in the oven. When done, take the cutlets up, remove all the fat from the stock, and strain it; let it boil, and reduce until it is as thick as single cream. Glaze the cutlets lightly, and put them into the oven to crisp the lardons; dish them up in a close circle, and serve with a purée of any vegetable you fancy.
This is the second half of a braised cutlet recipe — the page carries only the tail of the ingredient list, so the meat itself is never named. The method is classic braisière work: a bed of aromatics, a buttered paper, gentle frying, then a small quantity of stock and long slow cooking.
- What the cutlets areProbably veal, a common meat for larded and glazed cutlets in cookery of this period; lamb best-end cutlets behave the same way. The page carries only the tail of the ingredient list, so the meat itself is never named.
- GillsA British gill is 5 fl oz, so three gills is 15 fl oz — a scant 2 US cups. That is deliberately little liquid: it should come partway up the cutlets, not cover them.
- GlazeMeat glaze is brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A tablespoon or two of commercial demi-glace concentrate, or your own stock reduced by nine-tenths, does the same job. It is brushed on for gloss, not for flavouring the sauce.
- LardingEight strips of bacon threaded into the lean of each cutlet with a larding needle. Chilled fatback or streaky bacon cut into matchsticks holds together best; freezing the strips for ten minutes makes them stiff enough to thread. Without a larding needle, skip it and bard the cutlets with a sheet of fat instead — but then the final crisping step has no purpose.
- The buttered paperA cartouche of buttered parchment cut to the pan, laid directly on the meat. It stops the exposed lardons drying out during the initial ten minutes of gentle frying, when the pan is essentially sweating rather than browning.
- Oven temperatureThe book specifies no temperature, only 'a slow fire or in the oven'. A modern equivalent for three-quarters of an hour would be a low oven, roughly 300–325°F. Check that a skewer meets no resistance rather than trusting the clock.
- Reducing the sauceStrain, skim thoroughly — a braise of this kind throws a lot of bacon fat — then boil hard. "As thick as single cream" means it coats a spoon lightly and pours freely; it is a light glaze-sauce, not a gravy.
- Crisping the lardonsAfter glazing, a few minutes in a hot oven, or under the grill, browns the protruding bacon ends. Watch it: the glaze scorches quickly once it starts to colour.
- Yield and serviceThe recipe does not say how many cutlets it makes; the 'eight' refers to lardons per cutlet. Reckon one to two cutlets a person. The purée is left open — 'any vegetable you fancy' — spooned into the centre of the ring of cutlets.
Braising cutlets on a bed of sliced root vegetables and herbs, larding the lean meat, and finishing with a brushed-on glaze is the standard French treatment as it was taught in British cookery schools from the later nineteenth century onward — the spread was gradual rather than sudden — the era when Victorian professional and "high class" cookery adopted a lightly anglicised version of the classical repertoire wholesale, right down to the vocabulary of glaze, purée and braising-pan. Larding was in part a practical response to lean meat, though it was routinely decorative as well: veal cutlets and older birds carry almost no intramuscular fat, and the strips of bacon baste them from within during a long slow cook. It survives now mainly in restaurant kitchens, having been made largely redundant by fattier modern butchery and by the shift from braising to quick cooking. The arrangement of the cutlets in a close circle with the bones pointing inward is the older service style, a dish built to be carried whole to the table with the vegetable pur",