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Broiled Chicken Cutlets
Cut off the larger fillets of four chickens without injuring the small fillets; cut the wishbone in halves, take off the small fillets, remove the skin and make them into the shape of hearts, sticking the wishbones into the ends or points so as to make them look like cutlets. Sprinkle them with plenty of salt and pepper, brush them on both sides with egg and cover with breadcrumbs; next dip them into melted butter, then into crumbs again, smooth them over with a knife and broil over a good fire until of light brown. Pour some Spanish sauce on a dish, put the cutlets on it and serve. If preferred, they may be fried in butter.
A garde-manger exercise as much as a recipe: boneless breast meat shaped and bone-stuck to imitate a rib chop. The cooking is quick, and the crumb coating is what makes or breaks it.
- What "fillets" means hereThe large fillet is the breast half; the small fillet is the tender lying beneath it. Four chickens give eight cutlets, which serves eight as a course or four as a main.
- The wishbone trickEach half of the wishbone is pushed into the pointed end of the shaped breast so the cutlet reads as a chop with a bone. The recipe gives it no function beyond appearance. A frenched wing bone left attached does the same job with less fuss; omitting it costs nothing but the joke.
- Shape and thicknessFlatten the breast lightly between plastic to an even half-inch before cutting the heart shape. Uneven thickness is the main cause of a dry cutlet, since the thin edge overcooks while the center is still raw.
- The double coatingEgg, crumbs, melted butter, crumbs again. The second pass is what gives the crisp shell; smoothing with a knife blade compacts it so it does not shed. Chill the breaded cutlets 20 minutes before cooking and the crust will stay put.
- "Broil over a good fire"This implies cooking over a live fire rather than under a modern overhead broiler. Under an overhead broiler the butter-soaked crumbs scorch before the meat is done; a grill over medium coals, or a skillet as the recipe's own alternative allows, is closer to the intent.
- Cook to temperature, not colorLight brown crumbs can be reached in three minutes while the interior is underdone. Half-inch cutlets need roughly four minutes a side; take them to 165F at the thickest point.
- Butter for fryingWhole butter at the heat needed to crisp crumbs will brown and speckle. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a neutral oil, holds up.
- Spanish sauceEspagnole: a brown roux sauce built on veal or beef stock with mirepoix and tomato, reduced and strained. A good reduced brown chicken stock mounted with butter stands in acceptably.
Oscar Tschirky was never the Waldorf's chef but its maître d'hôtel, and his 1896 Cook Book collects the working repertoire of a large French-style American hotel kitchen at the height of its confidence. Cutlets of this kind — côtelettes de volaille — belong to a nineteenth-century service tradition in which boneless meat was cut to a standard silhouette and given a bone, real or borrowed, so that it arrived looking like something it was not. The same instinct produced mutton chops trimmed to a uniform curve and lamb cutlets in paper frills. A hotel dining room served dozens of covers from one pass, and uniformity of shape meant uniformity of cooking time; the ornament and the kitchen logic were the same thing. That the wishbone is pressed into service as a fake chop bone is a nice piece of thrift on a dish already built from the most expensive part of four birds.