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Broiled Veal Cutlets
Cut half a dozen veal cutlets from a fine piece of loin of the white veal, pare and flatten them slightly, place them on a dish and season with one tablespoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of pepper and one tablespoonful of sweet oil. Turn the cutlets over a number of times to have them well covered, place them on a broiler over a clear fire and cook them for eight minutes on both sides. Remove them from the fire, arrange them on a hot dish, spread over a small quantity of maitre d'hotel butter, and serve as soon as possible. Broiled Veal Cutlets with Colbert Sauce Trim a few veal cutlets, beat them lightly with a cutlet-bat, dust over with salt and pepper and roll them in melted butter and breadcrumbs; broil them on both sides over a clear fire; dish them in a circular form round a puree of string beans and pour over some colbert sauce, which is made by mixing one tablespoonful of chopped parsley and a little grated nutmeg with one breakfast cupful of butter. Pour into a stewpan one breakfast cupful of melted meat glaze and let it boil; then move it to the side of the fire and add by degrees the prepared butter alternately with the juice of three lemons; stir quickly over the fire, but do not let it boil. When the sauce has thickened remove it from the fire and add a wineglassful of cold water.
Broiled Veal Cutlets with Tomato Sauce Beat some cutlets with the flat side of a chopper, trim, season them with salt and pepper, and arrange them on a gridiron. Broil the cutlets over a clear fire, turning and basting them with butter. When cooked, brush the cutlets over with a paste brush dipped in melted glaze, arrange them in a circle on a hot dish, and serve with a sauceboatful of tomato sauce.
Three broiled veal variations, written for a coal-fired hotel broiler and a brigade that had meat glaze standing by. The main adjustments are the salt, the cooking time, and the sauce.
- Cut the salt backA tablespoon of salt and a teaspoon of pepper for six cutlets is a hotel seasoning cup, not a dose. Season the cutlets as you normally would — roughly a teaspoon of salt total for six — and use the oil to make it stick.
- Sweet oilSweet oil means olive oil, the mild table grade rather than a peppery modern extra-virgin. A neutral oil works as well here since the flavour comes from the fire and the butter.
- Eight minutes a side is too longWatch the cooking time -- 'eight minutes on both sides' may mean eight minutes total or eight a side; read as the latter, loin cutlets pared and flattened to barely half an inch will be dry and grey. Give them three to four minutes a side over hot coals or a preheated grill pan and pull them at 145F internal, then rest five minutes.
- A clear fireGlowing coals with no flame and no smoke — the equivalent of a charcoal grill that has burned down to grey ash, or a gas grill on high with the lid up. Flame licking buttered, crumbed cutlets will scorch them before the centre is warm.
- Cutlet-batA cutlet-bat is a flat mallet; the flat of a heavy chopper does the same job, as the third variation says. Work from the centre outward through plastic wrap to widen the cutlet rather than tear it.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup in this period runs larger than a modern measuring cup — call it 8 to 10 fluid ounces. A full cup of butter against a cup of glaze and three lemons is a very rich, very sharp sauce; start with half the butter and taste.
- Meat glazeGlace de viande: brown veal stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. Reduced commercial demi-glace or a glace concentrate dissolved in a little water is the practical substitute; plain stock will not give the body the sauce depends on.
- The Colbert sauce must not boilThis is a butter emulsion carried on glaze and lemon juice, and it breaks the moment it simmers. Take the pan off the direct heat before the butter goes in, add it in small pieces alternately with the lemon juice, and keep it barely warm. The wineglassful of cold water at the end most likely serves to arrest the heat and steady the emulsion, though the recipe does not say so.
- Maître d'hôtel butterMaitre d'hotel butter -- Softened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, chilled and sliced. It is the only finish the first version gets, so make it well ahead.
- YieldSix cutlets serves six as a course, or four as a main plate with the string bean purée.
Oscar Tschirky's book catalogues the Waldorf kitchen as a French kitchen operating in New York, and this page is a good example: one plain broil finished with maitre d'hotel butter, and two dressed up with classical sauces. The "white veal" he specifies is milk-fed calf, prized in nineteenth-century hotel cooking for its pale flesh and mild flavour, and priced accordingly. The Colbert garnish and sauce are generally traced to the mid-nineteenth-century French repertoire and named for Louis XIV's minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, one of a set of dishes christened after historical figures during that period; the version here, an emulsion of butter, parsley, nutmeg, meat glaze and lemon, is closer to what later cookbooks call beurre Colbert than to a true sauce. The reliance on meat glaze in the two sauced variations is the clearest sign of a professional kitchen behind the page. The dish itself is unremarkable; the sauces are the reason it earned a page.