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Italian Cutlets
430. Cut some well-shaped veal cutlets, and prepare some parsley and other sweet herbs, by chopping fine, and simmering them in a little butter melted in the pan. Dip the cutlets in yolk of egg, then spread on them the herbs and butter, upon which lay, plentifully, fine bread crumbs; again put on egg, herbs, and crumbs, and nicely fry them, drain the fat from them, and glaze or not. They must be served in a rich and well-flavoured gravy.
A mid-Victorian breaded veal cutlet, twice egged and crumbed with a herb-butter layer sandwiched between the coatings. The whole success of it rests on the double coat holding together in the pan.
- Chill between coatsThe first layer of egg, herbs and crumbs benefits from 20-30 minutes in the refrigerator before the second goes on, or the herb butter softens and the crust can slide off in the fat. The book gives no instruction on this point.
- What a "veal cutlet" wasMost likely a slice from the leg or loin, perhaps 1/2 inch thick, though the term could also cover a trimmed bone-in cutlet; "well-shaped" is all the book offers. Escalopes pounded thin are the nearest modern equivalent and cook in only a few minutes a side.
- Sweet herbsAromatic culinary herbs, nothing sugared. Period mixtures usually centre on parsley with thyme and marjoram, sometimes savory, basil or chervil. A tablespoon or so of the mixture per cutlet is plenty.
- Simmering the herbs in butterKeep the heat low and stop as soon as the parsley loses its raw edge, a minute at most. The point is to bind the herbs into a spreadable paste, not to brown the butter.
- Frying mediumShallow-fry in clarified butter or a neutral oil at about 350F. Whole butter at the heat this crust wants will blacken before the veal is through.
- Glaze or notVictorian "glaze" is meat stock reduced to a syrup and brushed on for gloss. It is optional here and arguably counterproductive on a crisp crumb coat; leave it off unless the cutlets are going out cold on a buffet.
- The gravyThe book asks only for something "rich and well-flavoured"; a reduced veal or beef stock, lightly thickened, answers that, and a spoon of Madeira or sherry is a reasonable addition though the recipe does not call for it. Pour it round the cutlets rather than over them so the crust stays dry.
- YieldAllow one substantial cutlet or two thin escalopes per person; the quantities are left entirely to the cook, as was normal in recipes of this date.
"Italian" in Victorian British cookery books often signals less an Italian source than a set of habits the English associated with Italy - chopped herbs, breadcrumbs, sometimes Parmesan (though there is none here), a butter or oil fry. The technique itself is the standard European breaded cutlet, which appears in Italy as cotoletta alla milanese, in French kitchens as côtelette à la milanaise, and in Austria as Wiener Schnitzel; how "Italian" came to be attached to this particular English version is not documented. Veal was a comparatively costly meat on the mid-nineteenth-century middle-class table, and a dish like this one - a modest quantity dressed up with two coats of crumb, a herb butter and a reduced stock gravy - makes a small piece of veal go further as a course.