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Dutch Cutlets of Veal
429. Cut a thick slice from a leg of veal, beat it, and shape it into cutlets, and, dip them in yolk of egg. Mix a well-seasoned forcemeat, to which the addition of oysters is a great improvement, and spread it over the cutlets. They should be rolled up and finished with egg and crumbs in the usual way of veal cutlets; then roast them in the oven or before the fire, and serve with balls of the forcemeat described at par. 335, and which is improved by the addition of some lean ham. Serve with a good gravy flavoured with lemon-juice, mushroom ketchup, and a glass of sherry, or they may be served in a white sauce.
This is a veal olive under another name: a pounded cutlet spread with forcemeat, rolled, crumbed and roasted. The instructions assume a cook who already knows the house forcemeat and the standard egg-and-crumb routine, so most of the work is filling in what is left unsaid.
- The cutA thick slice from the leg is what a butcher now sells as veal top round or escalope. Beat each slice to about 1/4 inch; any thicker and it will not roll, any thinner and it tears when the forcemeat goes on.
- Roll and secureThe recipe never says to tie them. Roll with the grain running the length of the roll, then fasten with kitchen string or a cocktail stick, or the forcemeat escapes and the crumb coat slides off during cooking.
- Order of operationsThe yolk-dip before the forcemeat is there to glue the stuffing to the meat. The second coating -- egg and crumbs "in the usual way" -- goes on after rolling: beaten whole egg, then fine dry breadcrumbs, pressed on firmly.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no heat; a brisk oven, around 400F/200C, suits these. Twenty to twenty-five minutes for rolls of this size, turning once, until the crumb is deep gold and the centre reaches 160F/71C. Brush or spray with melted butter first; crumbs do not colour in a dry oven.
- Oysters in the forcemeatChop them and add raw, with a little of their liquor to bind. They cook through inside the roll in minutes. Oysters cooked hard before being added turn to rubber by the time the veal is done.
- The forcemeat cross-referenceParagraph 335 is not reproduced here. Any veal forcemeat of breadcrumbs, suet or butter, chopped herbs, lemon zest, mace and egg will do; the suggested lean ham is worth taking up, finely minced, at roughly a quarter the weight of the crumbs.
- Mushroom ketchupNot the tomato product. It is a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract, still sold by some British makers; a mixture of soy sauce and a little Worcestershire gives a similar savoury depth in the gravy.
- YieldA leg slice of about 1 1/2 lb makes six rolls, enough for four as a main course. The forcemeat balls are fried or baked alongside and served as a garnish, not a stuffing.
"Dutch" attached to a British dish rarely signals a genuine Netherlands origin, and this preparation is essentially the older English veal olive, a slice beaten flat, spread with forcemeat and rolled up. Oysters were cheap enough in Victorian Britain to be used as a seasoning inside a forcemeat rather than as the centre of a dish, and cookery books of the period scatter them through beef puddings, sauces and stuffings in exactly this offhand way. The finishing gravy -- lemon juice, mushroom ketchup and a glass of sherry -- is a common savoury combination of the Victorian kitchen, doing the work that a stock reduction would do now.