Veal Collops
Cut veal in pieces size of an oyster, dip in egg, roll in cracker crumbs, and season with salt and pepper. Fry as you do oysters in hot lard or butter.
A three-line recipe that assumes you already know how a cook of 1890 fried oysters. The whole thing hinges on cutting the veal thin enough that it cooks through in the time the crumb coating takes to brown.
- "Size of an oyster"Roughly a 2-inch piece, and — the part the recipe leaves out — no more than about a quarter-inch thick. Cut from a leg cutlet or scallopine and pound lightly if needed; thick chunks will still be raw when the crumbs are dark.
- Cracker crumbsCrushed plain crackers, soda or common crackers, not seasoned breadcrumbs and not panko. They fry into a denser, sandier crust than bread. Worth seasoning the crumbs as well as the meat.
- The eggBeat it well with a spoonful of water or milk. Straight unbeaten egg sits in ropy patches and the crumbs fall away in the pan.
- Frying "as you do oysters"The recipe gives no depth or temperature. In modern terms, shallow fat hot enough that a crumb sizzles immediately -- somewhere around 350-365F -- works well. Two to three minutes a side is enough; veal this thin overcooks fast and turns dry and stringy.
- Lard or butterWhole butter at frying heat browns and burns before the second batch is done. Use clarified butter, or lard, or half butter and half neutral oil if you want the flavour without the scorching.
- DonenessModern guidance for veal cutlets is 145F with a short rest. At this thickness the coating colour is a reliable guide: golden and set means cooked.
- Yield and servingA pound of veal will feed about three. Drain on a rack rather than paper so the crust stays crisp; lemon suits it, though the recipe itself specifies no accompaniment.
Collop is an old English kitchen word, generally traced to a Middle English term — colhoppe or coloppe — attested for fried bacon and egg or for a slice of meat, though the derivation beyond that is uncertain. It is the same word that gives Scotland its minced or sliced "collops" and gave the pre-Lenten Collop Monday its name, when households ate up their bacon before the fast. By the time the Butterick Publishing Company issued its cook book for the readers of its dress patterns, a collop simply meant a small thin piece of meat, egg-and-crumbed and fried. The instruction to fry it "as you do oysters" is a fair marker of the period: fried oysters were so standard an item in an American kitchen that they could be used as the unit of measure for both the size of the piece and the method, no further explanation required.