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Veal Cutlets with Cream Gravy
2 pounds veal cutlets Salt and pepper Egg Bread or cracker-crums Drippings 1 cup milk or cream 1 tablespoon flour Wipe the cutlets, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dip them first in beaten egg and then in fine bread or cracker-crums, and saute in drippings until brown. If preferred, they may be cut into small pieces of similar size and pounded with a rolling-pin until little more than a quarter of an inch in thickness and then egged and crummed and sauted. The cutlets should be thoroughly browned on both sides. Place them on a platter, add cream to the gravy in the pan, and thicken slightly with flour rubbed to a smooth paste with a little cold water. They may be served with slices of bacon. Tomato sauce may be used instead of milk sauce.
A plain breaded veal cutlet with a pan gravy built in the same skillet. The whole dish turns on how thin the meat is and how briefly it cooks.
- Pound thin, cook fastAt a quarter inch, the cutlets need only about two minutes a side over medium-high heat. Thicker pieces sit in the fat long enough for the crumb coating to darken past pleasant while the interior overcooks and dries.
- DrippingsThis means saved bacon, pork or beef fat from earlier cooking, kept in a crock by the stove. Clarified butter, lard, or a neutral oil with a spoonful of butter added at the end all work; a mix of oil and butter gives the browning the recipe asks for without scorching.
- The egg washOne egg beaten with a tablespoon of water or milk is enough for two pounds of cutlets. Let the crumbed pieces rest ten minutes on a rack before frying so the coating sets and stays on in the pan.
- Cracker-crumsPeriod cracker crumbs were usually made from plain soda or common crackers, crushed fine. Saltines are the closest thing on a modern shelf; reduce the salt on the meat if you use them. Dry bread crumbs, not fresh, give the crisper crust.
- Cut of meatVeal cutlet here means a slice from the leg or loin, which is what a supermarket now sells as veal scallopini or cutlet. Two pounds serves four to six.
- Building the gravyPour off all but a tablespoon or two of fat, then add the cup of milk or cream and scrape up the browned bits. Thicken with the flour-and-cold-water paste off the heat, whisking, then return to a simmer for a minute or two to cook out the raw starch.
- Cream or tomatoWith cream the dish is a milk gravy in the American farmhouse manner; the tomato sauce variation leans toward the Italian and Austrian breaded-cutlet dishes. Both options were familiar in American household cooking of the period.
- DonenessVeal cooked to about 145F and rested is still faintly pink and tender. The instruction to brown thoroughly on both sides refers to the crust, not to cooking the meat grey.
Breaded veal cutlet reached American kitchens through the German and Austrian immigration of the nineteenth century, a plainer cousin of Wiener schnitzel, and it was firmly domesticated by the time The New Delineator Recipes appeared. What marks the version as American is the cream gravy raised in the pan, a habit better known from fried chicken and country ham and usually traced to Southern and Midwestern farm cooking, where milk was on hand and nothing browned in a skillet was thrown away. The alternative of tomato sauce, offered here almost as an afterthought, shows how readily the two traditions sat side by side in a general-purpose recipe collection meant for readers of a women's fashion magazine.