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The Cook's: Parmesan
No. 88. Coste di Vitello Imboracciate (Ribs of Veal) Ingredients: Ribs of veal, butter, eggs, Parmesan, bread crumbs, parsley.
Cut all the sinews from a piece of neck or ribs of veal, cover the meat with plenty of butter and half cook it on a slow fire, then let it get cold.
When cold, egg it over and roll it in bread crumbs mixed with a tablespoonful of grated Parmesan; fry in butter and serve with a garnish of fried parsley and a rich sauce. A dessert-spoonful of New Century sauce mixed with quarter of a pint of good thick stock makes a good sauce. (See No. 226.) No. 89. Costolette di Montone alla Nizzarda (Mutton Cutlets) Ingredients: Mutton cutlets, butter, olives, mushrooms, cucumbers. Trim as many cutlets as you require, and marinate them in vinegar, herbs, and spice for two hours. Before cooking wipe them well and then sautez them in clarified butter, and when they are well coloured on both sides and resist the pressure of the finger, drain off the butter and pour four tablespoonsful of Espagnole sauce (No. 1) with a teaspoonful of vinegar and six bruised peppercorns over them. Arrange them on a dish, putting between each cutlet a croûton of fried bread, and garnish with olives stuffed with chopped mushrooms and with slices of fried cucumber.
No. 90. Petto di Castrato all' Italiana (Breast of Mutton) Ingredients: Breast of mutton, veal, forcemeat, eggs, herbs, spice, Parmesan.
Stuff a breast of mutton with veal forcemeat mixed with two eggs beaten up, herbs, a little spice, and a tablespoonful of grated Parmesan, braize it in stock with a bunch of herbs and two onions. Serve with Italian sauce (No. 6).
No. 91. Petto di Castrato alla Salsa piccante (Breast of Mutton) 90.
Ingredients: Same as No.
When the breast of mutton has been stuffed and cooked as above, let it get cold and then cut it into fillets, flour them over, fry in butter, and serve with tomato sauce piquante (No. 10), or one dessert - spoonful of New Century sauce in a quarter pint of good stock or gravy.
Four related dishes from the Parmesan chapter, written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen: no quantities for the meat, no oven settings, and a proprietary bottled sauce that no longer exists. Here is what needs translating.
- New Century sauceEvidently a proprietary bottled sauce of the period, and long gone. Its exact character is not recorded here, but a sharp bottled brown sauce such as Worcestershire, with a little tomato ketchup, whisked into the stock stands in for it. The recipe's cross-reference (No. 226) points to a related entry elsewhere in the book.
- Espagnole and Italian sauceEspagnole is the brown mother sauce, built on browned stock and roux and thickened by long reduction; Italian sauce is one of its derivatives, made from it with mushrooms and herbs. If you are not making the book's No. 1 or No. 6, a good reduced veal or beef stock lightly thickened, then finished with vinegar and peppercorns as directed, carries the dish.
- Castrato is muttonPetto di castrato is the breast of a wether, a castrated ram, sold in Britain as mutton. Mutton is now a specialist order; a breast of lamb behaves the same way but is smaller and cooks faster, so check the braise at 90 minutes rather than the two hours or more mutton wants.
- The half-cooked vealNo. 88 depends on stopping the veal well short of done, chilling it firm so it slices and crumbs cleanly, then finishing it in the frying pan. That second frying is the real cooking; take the meat to 145F at the centre before serving, and do not let the cold stage sit longer than a day in the refrigerator.
- Judging the cutlets"Resist the pressure of the finger" is a touch test for doneness, usually read as springy rather than soft or stiff, so somewhere around medium. For trimmed mutton or lamb cutlets in clarified butter that is roughly three to four minutes a side over medium-high heat.
- Marinating in vinegarTwo hours in straight vinegar with herbs and spice will grey the surface of the meat and firm it noticeably. Wiping the cutlets dry before they go into the pan is not optional; wet meat will not colour.
- Fried parsleyWhole sprigs, thoroughly dry, dropped into hot butter or oil for a few seconds until they stop hissing and turn dark green. Wet parsley spits violently, so pat it dry and use a lid or spider.
- Fried cucumberPeel, cut into thick slices or batons, salt them for twenty minutes and pat dry before frying, or they will steam rather than brown.
- YieldNone of the four gives a quantity. Reckon one veal rib or two mutton cutlets per person, and a whole stuffed breast of mutton as four to six servings.
The Cook's Decameron (1901), compiled by Mrs W. G. Waters, borrows Boccaccio's frame: ten diners marooned by circumstance who tell recipes instead of tales, all of them Italian. The Parmesan chapter is a good illustration of what "Italian cookery" meant to an educated English household at the turn of the century, which is to say Italian dishes written out in the grammar of the French professional kitchen. The instructions say sautez, the sauces are Espagnole and piquante, and the finishing touch is a bottled proprietary sauce. Even the titles hedge, giving the Italian name and then an English gloss in brackets. Behind the French dressing, though, the dishes themselves are frugal and recognisably regional: breast of mutton stuffed and braised, then the meat sliced, floured and fried a second time; cheap cuts cooked twice so nothing is wasted. Alla Nizzarda points to Nice, which belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia until it was ceded to France in 1860, and whose olives and vegetables were still treated as part of the Italian repertoire.