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Veal Cutlets-Chestnut Sauce
8 veal cutlets. 1 tablespoon butter. 1/2 tablespoon sugar. 1 cup cream. 1 lb. Chestnuts. 1/2 teaspoon salt.
Dash of cayenne. Brush cutlets with butter, sprinkle with salt and pepper and broil. Cook chestnuts, press through sieve, and add cream, butter and sugar. Serve hot with cutlets.
A spare wartime-era formula that assumes you know how to handle both a broiler and a pound of chestnuts. The chestnut purée is the whole point; the cutlets are simply broiled meat.
- The chestnuts are the workCut an X through the shell of each nut, then boil 15-20 minutes or roast at 425F for 20, and peel while still hot — the inner skin clings hard once cool. A pound in the shell yields roughly 12 oz of peeled meat.
- SievingA drum sieve or food mill gives the smooth texture intended. A food processor turns cooked chestnuts gummy rather than fluffy, so pass them through a mesh sieve if you want the original result.
- Sauce consistencyOne cup of cream to 12 oz of chestnut purée gives a thick spooning sauce, closer to a soft mash than a pouring sauce. Loosen with warm milk or stock if you want it to nap the meat.
- The cayenneIt is listed among the ingredients and never named in the method, though the instruction to 'sprinkle with salt and pepper' may be where it was meant to go. It could equally be added to the sauce, where it cuts the sugar and cream; a dash is conventionally reckoned at about 1/8 teaspoon.
- Veal cutlets todayModern veal cutlets are usually thin scaloppine, which will overcook under a broiler in two minutes a side. Ask for cutlets about 1/2 inch thick, or use loin chops, and broil to an internal 145F with a three-minute rest.
- Brushing with butterOne tablespoon of butter will not cover eight cutlets and also enrich the sauce. Use extra for brushing and reserve the tablespoon for the chestnuts.
- YieldEight cutlets serve four generously, or six at a table with several other dishes. The recipe itself states no yield.
Chestnut purée with veal belongs to a long European habit of pairing pale meats with sweet starchy accompaniments — the same logic that puts chestnut stuffing in a turkey or chestnut purée beside game birds. Mrs. Mary A. Wilson wrote for American households during and just after the First World War, when she was closely associated with food-conservation campaigns, and chestnuts had the appeal of being filling, cheap in season, and not wheat or sugar. The chestnut blight introduced around the turn of the century was already destroying the native trees by the time this book appeared; the nuts sold today are almost entirely European or Asian. The half-tablespoon of sugar and the dash of cayenne look like a way of keeping a bland purée from tasting merely starchy.