Chicken Cutlets
INGREDIENTS for 1 large entrée.-2 chickens; seasoning to taste, of salt, white pepper, and cayenne; 2 blades of pounded mace, egg and breadcrumbs, clarified butter, 1 strip of lemon-rind, 2 carrots, 1 onion, 2 tablespoonfuls of mushroom ketchup, thickening of butter and flour, 1½ egg. AVERAGE COST, 4s. 6d.
Remove the breast and leg-bones of the chickens; cut the meat into neat pieces after having skinned it, and season the cutlets with pepper, salt, pounded mace and cayenne. Put the bones, trimmings, &c., into a stewpan with 1 pint of water, adding carrots, onions and lemon-peel in the above proportion; stew gently for 1 hour, and strain the gravy. Thicken it with butter and flour, add the ketchup and 1 egg well beaten; stir it over the fire, and bring it to the simmering-point, but do not allow it to boil. In the meantime, egg and breadcrumb the cutlets, and give them a few drops of clarified butter; fry them a delicate brown, occasionally turning them; arrange them pyramidically on the dish, and pour over them the sauce.
TIME.-10 minutes to fry the cutlets.
SEASONABLE from April to July.
A Victorian entrée that is really two operations: boneless chicken pieces crumbed and fried, and a small brown stock made from the carcasses and finished with an egg liaison. The sauce is where it can go wrong.
- The hinge: the egg must not boilBeaten egg stirred into thickened gravy will curdle into threads the moment it reaches a true boil. Temper it — whisk a ladle of the hot sauce into the egg first, return it to the pan off direct heat, and bring it only to the point where the surface trembles, around 175-180F.
- Two chickens means small birdsA Victorian spring chicken would have been a small bird, on the order of 2 to 2 1/2 lb dressed, so the two together yield roughly the meat of one modern 4 lb chicken. For a shortcut, a mix of boneless breasts and thighs, cut into neat flattened pieces, gives about the same quantity.
- Blades of maceMace is the lacy outer covering of nutmeg. Two pounded blades come to about 1/4 teaspoon ground mace; substituting a scant 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg is close enough.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato ketchup but a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, still sold by British specialty grocers. Worcestershire sauce or a teaspoon of soy plus a little mushroom soaking liquid stands in reasonably.
- Thickening of butter and flourAn unmeasured beurre manié. For 1 pint of stock reduced to roughly 3/4 pint, work 1 oz butter into 1 oz flour and whisk it in in pieces; the sauce should coat a spoon before the egg goes in.
- "A few drops of clarified butter"This most likely means moistening the crumbed cutlets so they colour evenly, rather than specifying the frying fat. Fry in a shallow depth of clarified butter or a butter-and-oil mix — plain butter at frying heat will burn before the cutlets are done.
- Ten minutes to fryAccurate for thin, evenly cut pieces, but check with a thermometer rather than the clock: 165F at the centre. Thick breast pieces should be flattened to about 1/2 inch or they will brown long before they cook through.
- Yield and service"One large entrée" in Victorian menu terms meant a dish for a course, not a main plate — it should stretch to something like six to eight as a course, or about four as a modern dinner. The pyramid arrangement is optional; overlapping the cutlets in a ring and pouring the sauce into the centre keeps the crumb crisp.
- The cost line4s 6d was the estimated price of the ingredients when the book was compiled, not a modern guide to anything. It is worth reading as a signal of how expensive two whole chickens were relative to a household's weekly budget.
Cutlets in the nineteenth-century kitchen were defined by shape and treatment rather than by the cut of meat: anything trimmed into a neat, flat, hand-sized piece, crumbed and fried, could be sent up as a cutlet, and cooks made them from veal, lobster and, as here, boned chicken. The technique let a cook spread two small birds across a whole course and, just as importantly, put the carcasses straight to work — the bones, skin and trimmings become the pint of stock that returns to the plate as sauce. The egg-and-butter liaison finishing that gravy is an older French method, a sauce thickened twice. The note "seasonable from April to July" points to a period when young chickens were genuinely a spring product rather than a year-round one, and the dish was priced accordingly.<HEADING>PLACEHOLDER</HEADING>