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Peanut-Butter Cutlets
1 1/2 cups peanut butter 1 1/2 cups hot milk 6 half-inch slices of bread 1 teaspoon salt Pepper Mix peanut butter with hot milk and seasoning, mixing together thoroughly. Dip slices of bread into the peanut-butter mixture. Saute in hot fat. Garnish with pickles and olives. This dish offers both adequate protein and iron.
A meatless "cutlet" of the shallow-fried, breaded-bread school, from a period when peanut butter was regarded chiefly as a protein source rather than a sandwich spread. Six slices, so six servings, though one is filling enough to serve as a main with a sharp salad.
- Warm the milk, not boil itHot milk is what lets the peanut butter loosen into a pourable batter; cold milk will seize it into a stiff paste. Heat to just steaming and beat it into the peanut butter a little at a time, as you would for a sauce.
- Choose your peanut butterPeanut butter of this period was often unstabilized and separated in the jar, closer to today's natural grind. Natural peanut butter gives the intended loose, savory result; a sweetened, hydrogenated supermarket brand will make the coating cloying and prone to scorching.
- The bread mattersHalf-inch slices of a firm, close-crumbed white loaf will hold up to dipping. Modern soft sandwich bread collapses; if that is what you have, leave the slices out for an hour or two to dry first.
- Dip, do not soakThe bread should take up a thick coat, not become saturated. A few seconds a side is enough, and the interior stays dry enough to hold together in the pan.
- "Saute in hot fat"This means a shallow layer of fat in a heavy skillet over medium heat, not a bare greased pan. Peanut butter carries sugars and protein that brown quickly, so keep the heat moderate and turn once, about three minutes a side.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt for the whole batch is on the low side given the volume of peanut butter; taste the mixture before dipping. A little cayenne or a spoonful of soy sauce would not be out of keeping and sharpens the flavor considerably.
- The garnish is functionalThe garnish -- Pickles and olives will cut the richness, whatever the original intent. Serve something acidic alongside, and expect the dish to be very rich indeed.
Peanut butter reached American tables through late nineteenth-century health reformers and sanitarium kitchens, where it was promoted as a digestible substitute for meat, and that reputation persisted into the 1920s. It suits this recipe's closing nutritional claim, which reads like a line from a nutrition pamphlet of the period. The word cutlet is doing familiar work here: meatless cookery of the era borrowed the vocabulary and the shape of meat cookery, so nut loaves, lentil roasts and cutlets like these arrived at the table looking like the thing they replaced. The Delineator was a Butterick magazine that carried domestic-science material to a general, not specifically vegetarian, readership.