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The Cook's: Marsala
No. 86. Frittura Piccata al Marsala (Fillet of Veal) Ingredients: Veal, butter, Marsala, stock, lemon, bacon.
Cut a tender bit of veal steak into small fillets, cut off all the fat and stringy parts, flour them and fry them in butter. When they are slightly browned add a glass of Marsala and a teacup of good stock, and fry on a very hot fire, so that the fillets may remain tender. Take them off the fire, put a little roll of fried bacon on each, add a squeeze of lemon juice, and serve.
No. 87. Polpettine Distese (Veal Olives) Ingredients: Veal steak, butter, bread, eggs, pistacchio nuts, spice, parsley. Cut some slices of veal steak very thin as for veal olives, and spread them out in a well-buttered stewpan.
On each slice of veal put half a spoonful of the following mixture: Pound some crumb of bread and mix it with a whole egg; add a little salt, some pistacchio nuts, herbs, and parsley chopped up, and a little butter. Roll up each slice of veal, cover with a sheet of buttered paper, put the cover on the stewpan and cook for three-quarters of an hour in two ounces of butter on a slow fire. Thicken the sauce with a dessert-spoonful of flour and butter fried together.
Two veal dishes from the same page: one a fast pan sauté, the other a slow braise of stuffed rolls. Both assume veal cut thin enough to cook through almost at once.
- The cut"Veal steak" here means a slice off the leg or loin, trimmed of fat and sinew as the recipe directs — close to what a butcher now sells as veal scallopini or cutlets, and thin. For No. 87 the book asks for slices "very thin as for veal olives", thin enough to roll without cracking.
- A glass and a teacupNeither is a fixed measure: period tables put a wineglassful at about 2 fl oz and a teacupful at about 4 fl oz, though "a glass" of wine may well mean more. Use dry (secco) Marsala, not the sweet dessert style, or the reduction turns cloying.
- The hinge in No. 86"Fry on a very hot fire, so that the fillets may remain tender" is the whole instruction. The fillets want 1-2 minutes a side, then out of the pan while the Marsala and stock reduce to a glaze; veal held in simmering liquid goes grey and tightens. Return them to the pan only long enough to coat.
- FlouringFlour the fillets just before they meet the butter. Floured meat left to sit turns pasty and will not brown, and the flour is also what thickens the Marsala into a sauce.
- The bacon rollStreaky bacon cut into short strips, rolled and fried crisp, one per fillet. Unsmoked or lightly smoked is closer to Italian pancetta than a heavily smoked breakfast rasher.
- Buttered paperThe "sheet of buttered paper" is a cartouche — parchment cut to the pan and laid directly on the rolls, under the lid, to keep them moist. Parchment does the job; buttered foil will also work.
- Cooking time for the rollsThree-quarters of an hour on a slow fire is long for thin veal wrapped around a bread stuffing. Check at 25-30 minutes over the lowest heat; the egg-bound filling will be set well before that and the veal only dries out from there. Add a splash of stock or water if the butter starts to catch.
- Finishing the sauceFlour and butter fried together is a roux, cooked briefly to blond — about 2 teaspoons of each, a dessert-spoonful. Whisk it into the pan juices, then bring back to a simmer for a minute to lose the raw flour taste.
- YieldNeither recipe gives a quantity. Reckon on 1 to 1 1/4 lb of veal, six to eight fillets or rolls, serving four.
Both recipes come from The Cook's Decameron (1901), Mrs. W. G. Waters's collection of Italian dishes framed as ten days of dinners told by a house party — a book aimed at English cooks who, in her view, knew nothing of Italy beyond macaroni. Piccata is often said to take its name from the sharp, piquant finish of lemon and reduced wine on quickly fried scallops of meat, though the etymology is uncertain, and the Marsala version ties the dish to Sicily: a fortified wine developed for the English trade in the late eighteenth century, traditionally credited to the Liverpool merchant John Woodhouse, and by 1900 as ordinary in a British kitchen cupboard as sherry. Polpettine distese means, literally, little meatballs or patties — from polpa, flesh — spread out flat, and Waters's gloss "veal olives" reaches for the familiar English term for any thin slice of meat rolled around stuffing — the pistachios and chopped herbs in the filling being the detail that would have marked it as foreign.