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Fried Veal Chops
Remove all the bones and sinews from the chops, mince the meat very fine and mix with it two-thirds of its quantity of finely-chopped streaky bacon; season the mixture to taste with salt, pepper and spices. Cut some pieces of caul in the shape of chops, spread the minced mixture over them, and bury a bone in every one so that the end only will be seen. Strew some grated breadcrumbs and a few sweet herbs over the chops. Melt a large lump of butter in a flat stewpan, put in the chops and fry them. When cooked and nicely browned, drain and place them on a hot dish; garnish with fried parsley, and serve at once. Chump of Veal, Bourgeoise Style Lard a chump of veal with strips of bacon. Butter the interior of a stewpan, put in some slices of bacon and trimmings of veal, place the chump over them and add three or four leeks, onions, carrots, a few sprigs of parsley, and one-half pint of stock. Place the cover on the stewpan with some live embers on it, and braise the contents over a slow fire. When cooked drain the veal and glaze it. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve into another saucepan, boil it quickly until reduced to a glaze, then pour in one-half teacupful of Spanish sauce; boil, pour it over the veal, and serve. White wine and gravy colored with a small quantity of browning may be used in place of the Spanish sauce if desired. A lump of butter should be dissolved in the sauce before it is poured over the veal.
Two dishes run together here: a mock chop built from minced veal wrapped in caul fat, and a braised chump of veal finished with a reduced sauce. Both assume a coal range and a butcher who will hand over caul and bones.
- The hinge: caul fatCaul is the lacy membrane from around a pig's stomach, and it is what holds these chops together and bastes them as they fry. Order it from a butcher, soak it in cool water to unfurl it without tearing, and pat dry before cutting your chop shapes.
- Save the bonesThe rib bone pushed into each patty is decoration, not structure; it is there so the plate reads as chops. Trim the bones clean when you bone out the chops and chill them so they seat firmly in the cold forcemeat.
- Meat-to-bacon ratioTwo-thirds as much bacon as veal is a great deal of fat and salt by modern taste; the recipe does not say whether that quantity is by weight or by measure. Half that gives a forcemeat that still binds and browns; salt lightly until you have fried a test spoonful and tasted it.
- "Spices"The recipe does not say which. In veal forcemeats of this period mace or nutmeg was the usual choice, sometimes with a little ground clove or allspice. A quarter teaspoon of mace per pound of meat is plenty.
- Cooking throughThese are raw minced-meat patties, not chops, and butter over a brisk fire will brown the caul long before the centre is done. Use a wide, heavy sauté pan over medium heat, turn once, and take them to 160F in the middle; finishing in a 350F oven for a few minutes is the easiest way.
- Fried parsleyWhole sprigs, thoroughly dry, dropped into hot fat for a few seconds until they stop hissing and turn brilliant green. Wet parsley will spit violently, so dry it well and stand back.
- Chump of vealThe chump is the rump end of the loin, roughly what an American butcher now sells as veal sirloin. Half a pint of stock is one cup; a teacupful is about three-quarters of a cup.
- Embers on the lidCoals heaped on the cover browned the top while the base simmered. A covered Dutch oven at 300 to 325F for two to two and a half hours does the same work; the meat is ready when a skewer slides in with no resistance.
- Spanish sauce and glazingSpanish sauce is sauce espagnole, the brown stock-and-roux base of the classical kitchen. "Glaze" here means reducing the strained braising liquid to a syrup and brushing it over the meat, not adding sugar.
Oscar Tschirky's book belongs to the last decades when hotel cooking in New York was frankly French, and this pair of veal dishes shows it: côtelettes de veau rebuilt from forcemeat in a caul, and a chump braised à la bourgeoise with root vegetables and bacon. The mock chop was a standard piece of restaurant economy and theatre at once, turning trimmings and boned-out meat into something that arrived at the table looking like a whole cut, complete with a bone handle to prove it. Caul fat was cheap and ubiquitous in a period when the whole animal reached the kitchen, and it did the job that plastic wrap and egg white do in a modern forcemeat. "Bourgeoise" in French menu language signals the homely treatment — bacon, leeks, carrots, onions, a covered pot — rather than a garnish of truffles, though the Waldorf still finished it with espagnole, and Oscar's alternative of white wine and browned gravy is a quiet concession to kitchens that kept no brown sauce standing.