Veal Cutlet
When buying veal cutlet, always have it cut thin. Cutlet may be cooked whole or cut into pieces for serving. Dust with salt, pepper and flour; dip in egg (1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon milk), then in bread crumbs. Brown on both sides in shallow fat in frying pan. Add boiling water to cover; season and cook slowly for 1 hour. Thicken gravy with 1 tablespoon flour mixed with a little cold water.
A breaded veal cutlet that is then braised — a treatment that belongs to the era when "cutlet" meant a slice off the leg rather than a pounded scallop. A few points reconcile it with what the butcher will hand you now.
- What "cutlet" meantIn American books of this period a veal cutlet is a cross-cut slice from the leg or round, lean and sinewy, not the tender loin chop. That is why it can stand an hour of moist cooking. Ask for veal round steak or leg cutlet, about 1/2 inch, and have it pounded.
- Thin, but not scallopine-thin"Cut thin" here means roughly 1/4 to 1/2 inch. A modern scallopine at 1/8 inch will disintegrate in an hour of liquid; if that is what you have, brown it, make the gravy separately, and give the meat two to three minutes a side.
- The hinge: liquid to the top of the meat, not over itThe liquid level -- The recipe says to add boiling water 'to cover,' which will soften the crumb coating. If you want to keep some crust, pour the water down the side of the pan so it comes about two-thirds up the cutlet, cover, and hold it at a bare simmer so the top stays above the line.
- Shallow fatAbout 1/8 inch of lard, drippings or oil in a heavy skillet, hot enough that a crumb sizzles at once — roughly 350F. Browning should take three or four minutes a side; a slow pan gives soggy breading.
- Doneness and timeAn hour at a low simmer suits a leg cutlet and should leave it fork-tender. Check at 45 minutes; a hard boil rather than a bare simmer is the likelier cause of stringy meat.
- The thickeningOne tablespoon of flour slaked in cold water thickens roughly a cup of liquid to a thin gravy. If the pan has more liquid than that, reduce it first or double the flour, and let it boil a full minute to lose the raw taste.
- Breading quantitiesThe one egg with a tablespoon of milk coats about a pound of cutlet; allow a scant cup of dry crumbs. Salt and pepper the flour rather than the meat, so the seasoning is even.
- YieldA pound and a half of cutlet with the gravy serves four, with mashed potatoes or noodles to take the sauce.
Breaded veal, browned and then stewed in its own gravy, sits somewhere between the Viennese schnitzel — crumbed, fried dry, served at once — and the older English and colonial habit of making tough cuts tender by long moist cooking, though the line of descent is more often asserted than documented. Veal was plentiful and cheap in dairy regions, where bull calves were a by-product of keeping cows in milk, and the leg cut a household bought was working meat rather than the pale, tender loin of restaurant cookery. Books of this kind filled out their meat chapters with exactly this sort of unfussy, unattributed instruction: no oven, no timing beyond "slowly," and a gravy thickened at the end because gravy was the point of the dish as much as the meat was.