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Veal Collops with Stuffed Peppers
Proceed in the same way as for veal collops, adding the juice of half a medium-sized lemon and one gill of hot Madeira sauce. Cook for three minutes longer, and decorate the dish with half a dozen stuffed green peppers three minutes prior to serving it.
This is a variation entry rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you have already read Oscar's basic veal collops and are simply finishing them differently. A few terms and quantities need translating before it makes sense at the stove.
- What a collop isA collop is a thin slice of meat cut across the grain and flattened — what a modern butcher case labels veal scallopini or escalope. Cut about a quarter inch thick, pound to an even eighth inch, and expect it to cook through in two to three minutes a side.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. For six collops that is a modest amount of sauce, enough to coat rather than pool.
- Madeira sauceIn a hotel kitchen of this period that meant a brown sauce or demi-glace finished with Madeira and reduced. A home version is pan drippings deglazed with Madeira, reduced by half, then bound with a good veal or beef stock reduction and a little butter. The book does not say which Madeira; the drier styles, Sercial or Verdelho, are probably closer to the intent than the sweet Bual or Malmsey.
- Add the wine sauce hotThe instruction says hot Madeira sauce for a reason. Cold sauce dropped into the pan drops the temperature, and the collops sit and stew instead of glazing.
- Three minutes, not moreVeal scallops of this thinness are already done by the time the sauce goes in. The extra three minutes is for the sauce to reduce and cling; longer and the meat turns grey and tightens.
- Lemon lastHalf a medium lemon is roughly a tablespoon and a half of juice. Added with the sauce it will hold, but taste before serving — acid concentrates as the sauce reduces.
- The stuffed peppers are garnishThey go on the dish three minutes before serving, meaning they are cooked separately and already hot. The recipe does not say what size they are, what the stuffing is, or how they are cooked — only that they are arranged on the dish, not cooked with the veal.
- YieldHalf a dozen peppers suggests a platter for six, with one or two collops each.
Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896, was written out of the Waldorf's kitchen at a moment when American hotel cooking drew heavily on French practice, and this entry shows the method: a base preparation followed by short variation entries that change one or two elements. Veal escalopes finished with Madeira belong to that repertoire — Madeira, fortified for the long sea voyage from the island and shelf-stable once opened, was a standard finishing wine in professional kitchens long before it became a curiosity. The stuffed peppers are the American note. Their appearance here as a decorative border, rather than as part of the dish, suggests a platter composed to be seen before it was eaten.