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Fried Veal Cutlets with Tomatoes
Cut about two pounds of veal cutlets from the leg into small slices, season them with pepper and salt, roll them in cracker-dust, then dip them in beaten eggs and again in cracker-dust. Have in readiness on the fire a fryingpan containing smoking fat one-half an inch in depth; put the veal into the hot fat and fry brown on both sides. While the veal is frying wipe half a dozen large, firm tomatoes with a damp cloth, slice them about one-half an inch thick, roll them in flour, season with pepper and salt and fry until brown in the pan with the veal. Serve the veal on a dish, with the tomatoes laid neatly round in a circle. The veal cutlets may be dipped in breadcrumbs and fried, and served with the tomatoes.
A straightforward pan-fry that depends almost entirely on managing the fat and the moisture in the tomatoes. Two points of technique carry the dish.
- Cracker-dustFinely rolled soda or water crackers, crushed to a coarse sand. Saltine crumbs are the closest current equivalent; use unsalted crackers if you want control over the seasoning, since the recipe already salts the meat.
- Cut and thicknessVeal "cutlets from the leg" means round steak from the hind leg, sliced across the grain. The recipe specifies only "small slices"; at about a quarter inch they will cook through in roughly two to three minutes a side, and anything much thicker will brown before the centre is done.
- Fat depth and temperatureHalf an inch of fat in a skillet is shallow frying, not deep frying. "Smoking fat" in a book of this period would most likely have meant lard or rendered drippings, which tolerate high heat; with modern oil aim for 350-360F and do not wait for smoke, or the crumb coat will darken while the veal is raw.
- DonenessVeal is a young animal but still ground-and-solid muscle from the leg, and coating with egg makes underdone meat hard to judge by eye. Cook to 145F at the centre and rest briefly.
- The tomatoesThey need firm, underripe fruit and a floured surface that is dry. Wet slices will steam rather than brown and will drop water into the fat, so blot them after slicing and salt them only as they hit the pan.
- CrowdingFrying the tomatoes alongside the veal in one pan, as written, works only in a wide skillet. In a standard 10-inch pan, cook the veal first, hold it in a low oven, and fry the tomatoes in the same fat.
- BreadcrumbsThe alternative closing line most likely means dry crumbs rather than fresh; fresh crumbs will absorb more fat and go soft.
- YieldTwo pounds of veal and six tomatoes serve four to six as a main course.
Oscar Tschirky's book gathered the Waldorf's kitchen output alongside a great deal of ordinary American household cooking, and this is squarely the latter: breaded veal in the Central European manner, married to fried tomatoes, which were a staple of late nineteenth-century American cooking in a way they never were in Vienna. Fried tomatoes turn up often enough in books of the 1880s and 1890s, usually floured and browned in the fat left from meat, and they were a way of using firm or barely ripe fruit at a time when a tomato was a seasonal and often mediocre thing. The double coating here -- crumbs, egg, crumbs again -- is the standard period method for a crust that holds, and the offhand note that plain breadcrumbs will do as well suggests that cracker-dust was, at least in some kitchens, the more likely thing to have on hand.