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Veal Cutlets, with Tomato Sauce
432. Season the bread-crumbs with a little salt, and a very little India seasoning and pepper, then fry as usual. Make the gravy of the prepared tomato sauce and a little stock, thicken, put the cutlets in a dish, and pour the gravy round the dish.
FRENCH WAY OF DRESSING A SHOULDER OF VEAL. 433. Cut the veal into squares and parboil them, then put the meat in the dish in which it is to go to table; season with salt, cayenne, nutmeg, powdered mace, and grated lemon rind, adding some butter or veal dripping rolled in flour. Make a gravy of the bones and trimmings, strain, and pour it in. Set it in a hot Dutch oven, and bake till brown; when nearly done add two glasses of white wine, and serve hot.
Two linked veal entries: crumbed cutlets finished with a tomato gravy, and a plainer baked shoulder in a wine gravy. Both assume a cook who already knows how to breadcrumb and fry, so the useful work is in translating the seasonings and the vessels.
- "Fry as usual"The assumed method is a dip in beaten egg, then the seasoned crumbs, then shallow frying in butter, lard or clarified dripping. Cutlets about half an inch thick need roughly three to four minutes a side to colour and cook through, to 145F internal with a short rest.
- India seasoningProbably a Victorian shorthand for a curry-style spice mixture; such blends were sold ready-mixed in the period, though what exactly went under this name is not recorded. The recipe asks for "a very little" only, so it should register as warmth rather than curry.
- Prepared tomato sauceNot a modern pasta sauce. Nineteenth-century tomato sauce was a cooked, sieved, vinegared and often spiced condiment, thick and sharp. Passata reduced a little with a splash of wine vinegar and a pinch of sugar gets you close.
- Thickening the gravyUse a small roux, or whisk in butter kneaded with an equal weight of flour off the boil. The sauce should coat a spoon lightly; it is poured round the cutlets, not over them, so it needs to hold its own on the plate rather than glaze the crumb.
- Butter rolled in flourIn the shoulder recipe this is butter (or veal dripping) worked or dusted with flour, in the manner of a beurre manie; no proportion is given. It melts and thickens the gravy as the dish bakes.
- Dutch ovenThe term could mean either a tin reflector oven stood open before the fire or a covered pot; "set it in" and "bake till brown" fits an enclosed baking. A conventional oven somewhere around 375-400F, or a few minutes under a hot grill at the end, will do the same job.
- Two glasses of white wineA wine glass of the period ran to about 2 fluid ounces, so two glasses is roughly half a cup, not the modern pair of 6 ounce pours. Add it near the end as the recipe says, and give it a few minutes to lose its raw edge.
- YieldNeither entry states a quantity. Reckon one 5-6 oz cutlet per person for the first, and a 3 lb boned shoulder for four to six for the second.
Both entries belong to the Victorian household repertoire of ways to make veal, a lean and mild meat, taste of something. The first leans on tomato, then still a fairly recent condiment in British kitchens and often bought bottled ready-spiced rather than made from fresh fruit out of season; the second leans on the older English seasoning set of mace, nutmeg and lemon rind, plus wine, a combination used with veal in English cookery from the eighteenth century. The label "French way" is doing modest work: it signals a cut-up, gravy-baked treatment of a cheap shoulder rather than any specific French original, and such attributions could be as much a claim to refinement as to provenance. The instruction to bake in the dish it goes to table in reflects a real economy, one less vessel to wash and no chance of the gravy being lost in transfer.