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Cheese Cutlets
To the well-beaten yolks of three eggs add one tablespoon of cream and one ounce of grated Parmesan cheese and season with mace and cayenne. Beat until very light and add one tablespoon of thick white sauce. Pour into a buttered pan and steam over hot water until firm. When cold cut in shapes with a fancy cutter, dredge with grated cheese and fry in boiling fat to a delicate brown. Serve at once on fried bread. Add a few drops of worcestershire sauce if liked.
A small savoury of set cheese custard, chilled, cut out and fried — closer to a croquette than to a cutlet. The whole thing depends on getting the custard cold and firm before it meets the fat.
- Chill it properly"When cold" means thoroughly cold, not merely cooled. Spread the mixture no more than half an inch deep, refrigerate several hours or overnight, and the shapes will hold; a barely-cool custard collapses in the fryer.
- One ounce of ParmesanAbout a third of a cup finely grated, or a scant half cup on the coarse side of a box grater. Use real Parmigiano-Reggiano or a good grana; the powdered shelf-stable kind will not set or brown the same way.
- Thick white sauceA tablespoon of stiff bechamel — roughly equal weights butter and flour cooked together, then milk stirred in to a paste-like consistency. Make more than you need, since a single tablespoon is impossible to manage, and use the rest elsewhere.
- Steaming over hot waterA double boiler or a covered heatproof dish set in a pan of barely simmering water. Keep the water below a boil or the custard curdles. Expect 20 to 30 minutes for a shallow layer, until the centre no longer wobbles.
- MaceThe outer covering of nutmeg, sold ground; it is warmer and less sweet than nutmeg itself. A pinch is enough for three yolks. Nutmeg substitutes at slightly less quantity.
- "Boiling fat"Deep fat, hot but not smoking; around 375F is the usual modern equivalent, though the book gives no temperature. The pieces are already cooked, so they need only long enough to colour — a minute or two. Lower fat soaks in and the custard softens through.
- The cheese coatingDry grated cheese alone adheres poorly to a moist custard. Pat the surfaces dry and press the cheese on firmly, or accept that some will be lost in the fat; either way, strain the oil before reusing it.
- YieldThree yolks make a very small quantity — six to eight little shapes, enough for two or three people as a savoury. Scale up if serving more, and fry in batches.
This belongs to the savoury, the small hot salted dish that closed a formal English dinner after the sweet and before the dessert fruit, and which American cookbooks of the 1900s borrowed along with the rest of the anglophile table. Cheese, anchovy and marrow were the standard materials, and the Butterick book — published by a pattern company for households aspiring to do things correctly — includes a run of them. The technique is that of the croquette: bind a flavouring with a stiff white sauce and egg, set it firm, cut it, and fry. The "fancy cutter" is a reminder that presentation carried real weight.