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Veal Forcemeat Cutlets
Chop fine two pounds of lean veal, cut from the hip if possible, place the meat in a bowl with two ounces of chopped raw veal suet, season with a pinch of salt, half a pinch of pepper and one-third of a pinch of nutmeg; add one-half breakfast cupful of good cream, one chopped shallot and two raw eggs, well mixed together. Roll the mass out to a thickness of one-half inch, cut some cutlets with any kind of cutlet-cutter, dust over with breadcrumbs and fry in a pan with two ounces of clarified butter for four minutes on each side. Serve with any kind of sauce.
A veal panade-less forcemeat, shaped like cutlets rather than stuffed into anything. The mixture is wet, so temperature control during shaping is what decides whether this works.
- Chill before shapingTwo pounds of veal with cream, eggs and suet will be too soft to roll at room temperature. Grind or chop cold, mix over ice if you can, then refrigerate the mass an hour before rolling it out between sheets of parchment.
- Oscar's pinchPinches -- the recipe's measures are imprecise and were meant to be judged by eye. For two pounds of meat, season to taste: about a teaspoon of fine salt, half that of pepper, and a small grating of nutmeg.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup was the large cup of the service, generally reckoned somewhere between 8 and 12 fluid ounces, so half a cupful is roughly 1/2 to 2/3 cup of cream. Add it gradually; if the chopped veal is very lean it will take all of it, if not the mass will be too slack to roll.
- Veal suetVeal kidney fat is hard to come by outside a butcher's counter now. Substitute 2 oz of finely chopped pork fatback or unsmoked salt pork, or the same weight of cold butter cut into the meat, for the same job of keeping the cutlets from drying out.
- Cutlet-cutterAn oval or leg-of-mutton-shaped tin cutter. A plain oval biscuit cutter or a knife and a template give the same result; scraps can be re-rolled once.
- BreadcrumbsDust the surface generously with fine dry crumbs and press them in, otherwise the wet forcemeat sticks to the pan and tears when turned. Some cooks flour first, then crumb.
- Timing and donenessFour minutes a side over medium heat browns half-inch cutlets and brings them through, but ground veal should reach 160F at the center. Check one; if the pan runs hot the crust will color long before that.
- YieldTwo pounds of meat makes roughly eight to ten cutlets, enough for four to six people. Fry in batches and add butter as needed rather than crowding the pan.
- Sauce'any kind of sauce' leaves the choice open: a tomato sauce, a mushroom or Madeira sauce, or simply the pan deglazed with stock and finished with butter.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book was written from inside a hotel kitchen, and forcemeat cutlets are a frugal trick dressed in restaurant clothing: chopped meat bound with cream and egg, cut into the shape of a proper cutlet so it arrives at the table looking like the real thing. The mixture belongs to the French godiveau family -- veal, suet, egg and cream -- also used for quenelles and forcemeat linings. Veal was a staple of American hotel dining rooms in this period, and its mildness suited it to whatever sauce the kitchen chose to put under it.