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Pork Cutlets and Anchovy Sauce
Broil on a well-greased gridiron over the fire seven nicely cut and trimmed cutlets of pork; place some anchovy sauce warmed on a very hot dish; put frills on the bones of the pork cutlets, and lay them around the dish, overlapping each other, and serve very hot, garnished with fried parsley.
A plating recipe as much as a cooking one: the whole point is seven chops fanned around a pool of anchovy sauce. Oscar assumes you already know how to broil and how to make the sauce.
- The hinge: don't drown themThe sauce goes under and around the cutlets, never over them. Poured on top it softens the crust and the salt reads as harsh rather than savory.
- GridironA ridged cast-iron grill pan over high heat, or an outdoor grill, gives the same result. Grease the bars, not the meat, and let the pan get properly hot before the pork touches it, or it will stick and tear.
- CutletsRib or loin chops cut about 3/4 inch thick, bone left long and scraped clean so a frill can sit on it — what a butcher now calls French-trimmed. Boneless chops work but you lose the arrangement the recipe is built around.
- DonenessPeriod cooks generally took pork well past pink, trichinosis being one of the reasons commonly given. Broil 4/5 minutes a side to an internal 145F and rest 3 minutes; the center will be faintly pink and the meat still juicy.
- Anchovy sauceIn this kitchen that means a butter-and-flour sauce or melted butter flavored with anchovy essence, a Victorian bottled product. Mash 4–5 oil-packed fillets or 2 teaspoons of anchovy paste into a cup of light béchamel or drawn butter, add lemon, and add no salt until you have tasted it.
- FrillsPaper cutlet frills, still sold for lamb crowns and poultry legs. They are decoration only; skip them and the dish loses nothing but its 1896 dining room.
- Fried parsleyFlat-leaf sprigs, thoroughly dry, dropped into 350F fat for 15–30 seconds until they stop sputtering and turn brilliant green. Wet parsley spits violently, and a few seconds too long turns it brown and bitter.
- YieldSeven cutlets serve three to four people. Warm the platter: the recipe calls for a 'very hot dish'.
- ServingEverything must be hot: the dish, the sauce, the meat. A butter-based anchovy sauce can separate and turn oily if it stands, so make it last and use it immediately; a flour-thickened version holds better.
Oscar Tschirky's book collects the repertoire of a large American hotel kitchen at the turn of the century, and this entry shows a repertoire largely French in method and English in seasoning. Anchovy sauce came into fashion through British cookery, where bottled anchovy essence and Worcestershire-style condiments were pantry staples, and it worked much as a modern cook uses a salty umami paste — to give plain broiled meat depth. It was more often served with fish or mutton, so pairing it with pork may be the kind of variation that kept a long hotel carte from repeating itself, though the book does not say so. The paper frills and the ring of fried parsley belong to the presentation conventions of the period, when a kitchen was judged on how a platter looked when the cover came off.