No. 1500

Veal Cutlets with Chicory—Larded

Cotelettes de Veau Piquees a la Chicoree

Pare six small veal cutlets, keeping the bone end rather short and the meat not too thick; lard them in the center all on the same side. Cover the bottom of a sautoir with fragments of fat pork and cut up onions and carrots, on this range the cutlets, season and moisten to their heighth with stock; stand the sautoir on a hot fire, reduce the liquid to half, then cover the cutlets with buttered paper; cook while covered on a slow fire or in a very slack oven increasing the moistening from time to time, lastly, glaze the cutlets at the oven door having them uncovered and basting with their own stock. Dress them, in a straight row on a long dish, the handle bone placed underneath; surround both sides with a garnishing of chicory cream; detach the glaze from the sautoir with a little broth and baste the meats with this after it has been skimmed and strained.

← No. 1499 Veal Cutlets, half-Glaze Veal No. 1501 Veal Cutlets, Maitre d'Hotel →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a braise disguised as a sauté: the cutlets cook slowly in a shallow pan of aromatics and stock, then are glazed dry at the end. Two terms need translating before you start — piquées and chicorée.

Larding, and whether to bother"Lard them in the center all on the same side" means threading strips of pork fat (lardons) through the surface of the meat with a larding needle, all facing up so they baste the top as it cooks. Modern veal cutlets are lean and this genuinely helps; if you have no larding needle, lay thin sheets of pork fatback or unsmoked bacon over the cutlets instead and remove them before glazing.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, wider than deep — a modern sauté pan or a shallow braiser with a lid. The width matters: the cutlets must sit in one layer.
Chicory means curly endiveRanhofer's chicorée is not the pale Belgian endive chicon and not American blue-flowered chicory root. It is frisée or escarole, blanched in salted water, squeezed dry, chopped, and finished with butter, a little béchamel or reduced cream, salt and a pinch of sugar. That is the "chicory cream" garnish.
Oven numbersThe recipe gives no temperature. "Very slack" is usually read as somewhere in the region of 275–325°F. Once the stock has reduced by half on the stovetop, the covered pan can go in at that sort of heat; for cutlets an inch thick or less reckon on roughly three quarters of an hour to an hour, judged by tenderness rather than the clock.
Buttered paperA round of parchment, buttered on the underside and laid directly on the meat — a cartouche. It keeps the exposed tops from drying as the liquid reduces.
Glazing at the oven doorGlazing at the mouth of the oven was standard practice on nineteenth-century ranges. Uncover, raise the heat or slide the pan under a low broiler, and baste every couple of minutes with the pan liquid until the surfaces take on a sticky brown shine. It happens quickly and burns quickly after that.
The sauce is the panDeglaze with a little broth, skim the fat, strain, and spoon over. No thickening — the body comes from the reduced stock and the gelatin the veal has given up.
YieldSix cutlets, so six servings in the Epicurean's context of a long menu; four as a main course today.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his professional compendium, numbered for cross-reference — hence the run of near-identical veal cutlet entries on either side of this one, mostly distinguished by garnish or finish. The dish itself is straightforward classical French practice: veal braised on a bed of pork fat and root vegetables, glazed, and set against a soft green purée, with the trimmed rib bone tucked under so the row of cutlets reads as a clean line on the platter. That presentation detail suggests restaurant cooking rather than household cooking. Greens cooked to a cream — chicory, sorrel, spinach — were a standard foil for veal, valued for cutting the richness of a meat that has almost no flavor of its own to fight with.