No. 1497

Veal Cutlets a la Seymour

Cotelettes de Veau a la Seymour

Prepare the cutlets the same as when cooked plain, season and dip in eggs, roll them in chopped up truffles and bread-crumbs and fry in clarified butter. Dress and garnish around with flowerets of cauliflower and cromesquis of sweetbreads. Pour part of a ravigote sauce over the cutlets, serving the remainder separately.

← No. 1496 Veal Cutlets Plain and a la Georgina Veal No. 1498 Veal Cutlets a la Zingara or Singara →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade, so this entry is really an assembly instruction resting on three other recipes in the book. Read it as a plated dish rather than a single procedure, and decide in advance which of the garnishes you actually intend to make.

"The same as when cooked plain"This points back to No. 1496, Ranhofer's plain veal cutlet, i.e. a trimmed cutlet from the rib rather than anything pounded thin. A modern veal rib chop about three-quarters of an inch thick works; if you use thin scaloppine the coating will burn before the meat is done.
The coating is the hingeEgg, then chopped truffle mixed into the crumbs, is a wet-then-dry breading with no flour stage, so press the crumb mixture on firmly and let the cutlets rest 15 minutes before frying or the truffle will fall away in the pan.
Clarified butterCalled for because whole butter's milk solids scorch at the temperature needed to brown crumbs. Clarify your own or use ghee; a neutral oil with a knob of butter added at the end is a reasonable stand-in.
Heat and donenessMedium heat, about 3 to 4 minutes a side for a three-quarter-inch chop, to an internal 145F with a short rest. Veal cutlets held longer go dry and the crust darkens past truffle into bitterness.
TrufflesRanhofer meant fresh or preserved black truffle, used more freely in a professional kitchen of the 1890s than a home cook would today. Truffle peelings or a small tin of chopped truffle give much the same effect at sane cost; truffle oil in a fried crumb crust mostly cooks off and tastes of nothing.
Cromesquis of sweetbreadsA thick sweetbread salpicon, chilled, cut into small blocks, traditionally wrapped in caul fat or a thin pancake, then battered and deep-fried. This is a full separate preparation requiring soaked, blanched and pressed veal sweetbreads a day ahead. A plain sweetbread croquette is a fair substitute; omitting the garnish entirely does no harm to the cutlets.
Ravigote sauceThe Epicurean carries both a hot ravigote (a thickened white sauce sharpened with shallot, herbs and vinegar) and a cold, vinaigrette-style one. Since the sauce is poured over hot cutlets, the warm version is the likelier intention. Keep it thin enough to coat without softening the crust, and sauce only the plate around the meat if you want the crumbs to stay crisp.
Cauliflower floweretsSmall florets boiled until just tender in salted water, drained dry, and set around the dish. They are there for colour and to soak up sauce, not for seasoning.
YieldOne cutlet per person, so scale by the number at table; four chops need roughly a cup of crumbs, two eggs and 2 to 3 ounces of chopped truffle in the grand manner, far less if you are economising.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and The Epicurean (1894) is the encyclopaedic record of what came out of it: hundreds of numbered garnishes and sauces built from a smaller set of base preparations, with dishes routinely named for patrons, actresses, statesmen and society figures. "À la Seymour" belongs to that habit of flattery-by-menu; the honouree is not identified in the book, and attaching a name to a familiar cutlet was a way of turning a repeated preparation into an occasion. What distinguishes the dish from an ordinary breaded veal chop is purely the trimming — truffle worked into the crumbs, fried sweetbread cromesquis, cauliflower, ravigote — which is exactly how a restaurant kitchen of the period generated variety without inventing new techniques. The frequency with which truffles and sweetbreads appear in these garnishes is also a reminder of how their prices have moved: both were then everyday luxuries of the professional larder rather than the special orders they are now.