Minuten Fleisch
1½ lbs. veal cut in thin slices Salt and pepper 2/3 cup claret wine
The entry as printed is essentially a shopping list: three ingredients and no method. What follows is what those quantities imply, and where the printed page leaves genuine gaps.
- The method is missingNo fat, pan, heat or timing is given here. Minutenfleisch means meat cut thin enough to be seared in a very hot pan for a minute or so per side; the entry never says what to do with the wine, though deglazing the pan is the obvious reading. If you need a full procedure, work from a current recipe for veal scallops rather than guessing at this fragment.
- ClaretIn American books of this period claret means red Bordeaux or a domestic wine in that style. Any dry, medium-bodied red will do the same job. Two-thirds cup is about 160 ml, roughly a fifth of a standard bottle.
- Thin slicesCut from the leg or loin, across the grain, and pounded to about 1/4 inch. Thickness is the whole point: a slice thicker than that cannot cook through in the minute the name promises, and longer cooking makes veal grey and dry.
- Season at the last momentSalt draws moisture to the surface, and a wet surface steams instead of browning. Season the slices as they go into the pan, not while they wait.
- Pan sizeA pound and a half of thin slices will not fit in one skillet without crowding. Cook in two or three batches and keep the finished meat warm; then add the wine to the empty pan and reduce it to a few spoonfuls of glaze.
- Yield1½ lb of veal serves four as a main course, three generously. There is no thickener in the list, so expect a thin pan sauce rather than a gravy.
The name is plain German — Minutenfleisch, "minute meat" — and it describes a technique rather than a regional dish: meat cut thin enough to be done in the time it takes to say so. Veal was also far more common on American tables then than now, a byproduct of the dairy trade sold in cuts a modern butcher usually has to be asked for. "Claret" is a period Anglo-American usage for red Bordeaux, generally traced to the medieval French clairet, a lighter-coloured wine; by 1900 it had loosened to mean almost any dry red on the sideboard.