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Veal Cutlets in Papers
Pare neatly half a dozen veal cutlets, put them into a sautepan with one ounce of butter and season with one tablespoonful of salt and one teaspoonful of white pepper. Add half of a chopped onion and brown slightly; add four finely-chopped mushrooms and cook for eight minutes; then pour in a gill of Spanish sauce and cook for four minutes longer. Remove, drain the cutlets and stand them one side to cool. Add to the gravy one teaspoonful of chopped parsley and two tablespoonfuls of breadcrumbs. Have in readiness six pieces of oiled white paper cut into the shape of hearts, place a thin slice of cooked ham on one side of the paper, pour over the ham a small quantity of the stock, and on top of it place a cutlet and another layer of the stock, and over all a thin slice of cooked ham. Cover with the second part of the paper, and close it by folding the two edges firmly together. Bake for a little time--at the most not more than five minutes--in rather a moderate oven, and serve without delay.
This is en papillote cookery: the cutlets are all but finished in the pan, and the paper case is a device for holding the perfume until the plate reaches the table. Read the salt figure before you reach for the box.
- The salt is out of scaleA tablespoon of salt for six thin cutlets is far more than modern palates accept, and the dish already carries two slices of cured ham per portion. Season the veal lightly and taste the sauce before assembling.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. That is a modest amount of sauce for six parcels, which is why breadcrumbs are stirred in to thicken it into a spreadable paste rather than a liquid that would soak through the paper.
- Spanish sauceSauce espagnole, the brown mother sauce of veal stock, browned mirepoix and roux. A good reduced brown veal or beef stock, lightly thickened, stands in for it; a half cup is all you need.
- Veal cutlets, 1900 senseVeal cutlets, 1890s sense -- In American books of this period the term usually meant a thin slice from the leg or loin rather than the thick bone-in chop sold as a veal chop today; escalopes or scaloppine are a reasonable stand-in, though the recipe gives no thickness. "Pare neatly" means trimming the edges and removing membrane so they lie flat in the paper.
- The paperBaking parchment does the job; oil or butter it as directed. Cut a heart large enough that the folded seam runs a good inch clear of the filling, and crimp in small overlapping pleats from the top of the heart to the point, pressing each fold hard.
- Oven heatThe recipe asks only for "rather a moderate oven" and gives no temperature; a moderate oven is conventionally taken as somewhere around 350F. The five-minute limit is real: the veal has already had some twelve minutes in the pan (eight with the mushrooms, four with the sauce), and the bake only heats the parcel and puffs the paper. Longer and the cutlets tighten and dry.
- Mushrooms and onionEight minutes of cooking is enough to drive off mushroom liquid and take the raw edge off the onion. Do not let the pan catch, or the bitterness carries straight into the sauce.
- Yield and serviceSix portions, one parcel each, taken to the table sealed and slit open at the plate so the diner gets the steam. Serve without delay, as the recipe directs; a parcel left standing loses its steam and the point of the dish.
Cooking en papillote — in a paper case cut as a heart and crimped shut — belongs to the classical French repertoire that Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maître d'hôtel, was translating for American readers in 1896. The heart shape is functional as much as decorative: the wide top gives room for the filling and the tapering point gives a long seam to crimp, and the paper puffs as the moisture inside turns to steam. Veal with ham and a brown sauce, sealed in paper, is a close relative of the older côtelettes en papillote found in nineteenth-century French manuals, where the ham's fat was there to baste the lean veal.