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Imitation Cutlets
A dish that I have done for those who like curry flavoring is the following. Take any cold cooked vegetables, and cutting them in small pieces, roll them in a thick white sauce which you have strongly flavored with curry. Put it aside to get firm. If you are in a hurry you can bind with the yolk of an egg in the flour and make a thick batter in that way. Form into cutlets and fry as you would a real cutlet. The same thing can be done with macaroni or spaghetti that is already cooked, with cold fish or anything that is insipid to the taste.
A croquette in cutlet shape, built to use up leftovers. The whole thing depends on the binding sauce being far thicker than a pouring béchamel.
- The hinge: chill until truly firmThe sauce must set solid before shaping, or the cutlets slump and burst in the pan. Spread the mixture on a plate no more than an inch deep and refrigerate at least two hours, preferably overnight. The book's "if you are in a hurry" egg-yolk shortcut works but gives a softer, more omelette-like interior.
- How thick is "a thick white sauce"Aim for a panade-strength roux: 3 tablespoons butter and 3 tablespoons flour to 1 cup milk, cooked until it pulls away from the pan in a mass. That will bind roughly 2 cups of chopped cooked vegetables.
- Curry powder then and nowCommercial curry powder sold in Britain at this period was generally mild and turmeric-heavy rather than hot. For "strongly flavored", something like 2 teaspoons per cup of sauce works, and frying it in the butter with the flour for a minute cooks off the raw spice note.
- Fry "as you would a real cutlet"The recipe leaves the coating unspecified; a cutlet of this period would commonly have been floured, egged and crumbed, and that treatment suits this mixture: flour, then beaten egg, then fine dry crumbs. Shallow-fry in about half an inch of neutral oil at 350-375F, two to three minutes a side, until the coating is set and browned.
- Cold fish and cold pastaBoth work, but chop finely; long strands of spaghetti make a cutlet that unravels. If you are using cooked fish or meat, make sure the finished cutlet is hot through the middle, not merely browned outside.
- Seasoning the insipidThe recipe's stated purpose is rescuing bland leftovers, so salt harder than feels right. Cold starch and cold sauce both mute salt, and boiled vegetables carry almost none of their own.
- YieldAbout 2 cups of bound mixture gives six to eight cutlets, enough for three or four as a light main course with a sharp salad.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in 1915 by Mrs. Brian Luck from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion, and the household economy of that moment is written all over this page. "Imitation cutlets" belong to a long European tradition of shaping bound or minced ingredients into the silhouette of a meat chop — a similar impulse to the croquette, and to the many Lenten "mock" dishes that let a cook serve the form of a joint without the substance. The curry flavouring reads as the anglicised element rather than the Belgian one: mild commercial curry powder was widely sold in British kitchens by the late nineteenth century and was often recommended for making dull cold food taste of something. The contributor's frank remark that the method suits "anything that is insipid to the taste" fits the frugality of wartime cooking.