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Scotch Veal Collops
Take about 1½ pounds of veal cutlet, having it cut in quite thin slices. Lay one slice at a time on a flat board and beat with a wooden mallet (or a pin) until almost as thin as paper. Cut these into circles about an inch and a half in diameter and dust with a mixture of salt, pepper and thyme or sweet herbs. Dip into slightly beaten egg, then in fine sifted dry bread crumbs and sauté quickly in the fat tried out from slices of salt pork-butter may be used if preferred.
As colored, transfer the collops to a saucepan.
When all are done add ½ pint of hot veal stock and ½ cupful of cream; cover and simmer gently until the meat is tender. Add ½ pint of oysters which have been plumped in one tablespoonful of butter, cook a moment longer, then take from the fire, add the yolks of 2 raw eggs mixed with 1 tablespoonful of cream. Stir, pour into a serving dish and sprinkle with finely chopped parsley.
A veal fricassee in the old Scots manner: the meat pounded paper-thin, breaded, browned, then finished in a stock-and-cream sauce thickened with egg yolk. Two things decide whether it works — the yolks must never boil, and the oysters go in at the very last moment.
- The yolk liaisonTake the pan off the heat before stirring in the yolks beaten with cream, and keep the sauce below a simmer as it thickens. Above roughly 180F the yolks curdle and the sauce turns grainy; it cannot be brought back.
- The quantity of vealThe printed page gives about 1½ pounds of veal cutlet, which is what our text now reads. That amount suits the half-pint of stock, half-pint of oysters and half cupful of cream; a smaller piece of meat would be swamped by them.
- Oyster timing"Plumped" means tossed in butter only until the edges ruffle, under two minutes. They then need no more than a moment in the sauce; prolonged simmering leaves them rubbery.
- Fat tried out from salt porkTrying out means rendering: cook a few slices of salt pork slowly until the fat runs and the slices are crisp, then lift them out and fry in the fat. Butter works, but browns faster and can burn at the heat needed for a quick sauté.
- MeasuresA pint here is the US 16 fluid ounces, so a half-pint of stock is one cup. A half-pint of oysters is roughly one cup of shucked oysters with their liquor, about 8 ounces.
- Pounding and cuttingBetween two sheets of plastic or parchment the cutlets go thinner with less tearing than on a bare board. The inch-and-a-half rounds the recipe calls for are wasteful; squares or irregular pieces cook identically, and the trimmings can go into the stock.
- Breading and browningSauté in a single uncrowded layer over fairly high heat, just long enough to colour — the meat finishes in the sauce. Wet breadcrumbs will slide off, so the crumbs must be dry and fine.
- Simmering timeVeal beaten this thin is tender in 10 to 15 minutes of gentle simmering. Longer and it goes stringy and the breadcrumb coating dissolves into the sauce.
"Collop" is an old English and Scots word for a slice of meat, recorded from the medieval period and still current in Scotland long after it had faded elsewhere; "Scotch collops" appears in British cookery books from the seventeenth century onward, usually meaning thin slices of veal or beef beaten out, fried, and stewed in gravy. The oysters and the egg-yolk liaison mark this as a genteel version of the dish: oysters were cheap and plentiful in North American and British ports through the nineteenth century, and were routinely used to stretch and enrich meat rather than as a luxury in their own right. The economy of the method is of a piece with that — a small quantity of veal, pounded thin, is made to go a long way, with salt pork drippings standing in for butter and the trimmings going nowhere but the stockpot.