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Veal Cutlets, Breaded
Trim and flatten the cutlets, add pepper and salt, and roll in beaten egg, then in oatmeal. Fry in good dripping, turn when the lower side is brown .
Drain off the fat, squeeze a little lemon juice on each, and serve in a hot flat dish.
A short, well-built recipe that assumes a competent cook and a hot pan. The two things it does not tell you are how thin the cutlets need to be and what kind of oatmeal is meant.
- Oatmeal, not oatsIn a book of this sort "oatmeal" most likely means dry medium or fine oatmeal — the gritty Scottish or Irish grind — rather than rolled flakes, though the recipe does not say. Rolled oats tend not to adhere evenly and can scorch at the edges before the meat cooks; pinhead oats are too coarse. Pulse steel-cut oats briefly or buy oatmeal labelled medium ground.
- Flatten properlyPound the cutlets to about 1/4 inch between sheets of plastic. At that thickness they cook through in three to four minutes a side and stay tender; a thick cutlet fried this way gives you a scorched crust over grey meat.
- Egg washBeaten egg alone gives a thin coat. A tablespoon of water or milk per egg loosens it enough to carry more oatmeal, and a light dusting of flour before the egg makes the crust stay on when you turn the cutlet.
- Good drippingUsually beef dripping, though any saved roast fat would have served; the pan should be shallow-fry deep — about 1/8 inch of fat, hot enough that the coating sizzles on contact (roughly 350F). Clarified butter or a neutral oil works; plain butter will brown too fast for the oatmeal.
- DonenessVeal cutlets are cooked at 145F internal, but at this thickness you are judging by feel and colour rather than a thermometer. Firm and opaque throughout is enough.
- Drain off the fatMost likely this means draining the cutlets rather than the pan — lift them onto paper or a rack for a moment, though the wording could be read either way. Oatmeal seems to hold fat more readily than breadcrumbs, and the lemon at the end reads as a foil to it.
- ServingAllow one to two cutlets per person; a pound of veal serves two or three. A hot flat dish matters here, since a covered or deep dish steams the coating soft quickly.
Breading in oatmeal rather than crumbs marks this as a dish from the British and Irish side of the tradition, where dry oatmeal is well attested as a coating for herring and trout. Veal itself was the fashionable young cook's meat in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, forgiving of plain treatment, and cutlets appear often in bridal and beginner cookbooks of the period. Frying in beef dripping was not thrift so much as default: households rendered and saved fat from every roast. The finishing squeeze of lemon recalls schnitzel served with a wedge of lemon, and the two dishes are close cousins in method if not in coating.