Veal Collops
2 pounds veal Egg Cracker-crums Salt and pepper Cut the veal in pieces the size of an oyster, dip in beaten egg, roll in cracker-crums and season with salt and pepper. Fry in deep fat.
A bare-bones frying recipe that assumes the cook knows how to handle veal and a kettle of fat. The quantities of egg and crumbs are left to judgment; two eggs and about a cup of crumbs will coat two pounds.
- Cut for even cooking"The size of an oyster" suggests pieces of roughly two inches across and fairly thin, perhaps half an inch, though the recipe does not specify. Leg or shoulder suits; flatten thick pieces lightly so they cook through before the crust darkens.
- Cracker-crumsMost likely plain soda crackers crushed fine rather than modern dry breadcrumbs. They fry to a lighter, crisper coat; panko is arguably the nearest substitute in texture.
- Season the meat, not just the crumbsAs written the salt and pepper come last. Salt the veal itself before dipping, and season the crumbs as well, or the interior tastes flat.
- Fat temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature; for pieces of this size a modern deep-fat range of about 350-375F works. Below that the cracker coat drinks oil; above it, the crumbs scorch before the veal is done. Fry in batches so the temperature does not drop.
- TimingTwo to three minutes total, turning once, is enough for half-inch pieces. Veal at this thickness is finished at 145F and goes dry and stringy with any more.
- Rest the coatingLet the breaded pieces sit ten minutes on a rack before frying. The egg sets and the crumbs stay on in the fat instead of sloughing off.
- Yield and servingTwo pounds serves about four. Lemon, a pan gravy, or tomato sauce were common accompaniments for fried veal in cookbooks of the period, though this recipe calls for none.
A collop is one of the older words in the English kitchen: a slice or small piece of meat, in use since the Middle Ages and surviving in "Collop Monday," the day before Shrove Tuesday when households ate up their meat before Lent. In American cookbooks of this period the word was often applied to small pieces of veal breaded and fried, essentially a scaled-down cutlet. Veal was cheap and plentiful in the era of small-farm dairying, since bull calves had little other use, and cookbooks of the period carry pages of veal recipes that read thin today largely because the meat itself has become expensive and unfamiliar. Cracker crumbs in place of bread crumbs is a characteristically American touch: soda crackers were a common pantry staple and gave a drier, crisper coating than stale bread.