No. 1501

Veal Cutlets, Maitre d'Hotel

Cotelettes de Veau Maitre d'Hotel

Cut six eutlets from a rack rather thick and straight, each one having one rib bone; cut the chain bone so as to detach the meat; suppress all the skin covering the fat and shorten the bone on the spine end, beat down the cutlets, not too thin, with a damp cleaver on a slightly wet table; scrape the rib bone toward the top where the frill is placed; round and pare the meat of the cutlet; season with salt, coat over with oil or melted butter; range them on a broiler, and broil them on a moderate fire for sixteen to eighteen minutes, turning them over at the end of eight or nine minutes. Lay them on a dish, glaze over with a brush, trim the handles with a paper frill (No. 10) and dress them crown-shaped on the serving dish with a layer of maitre d'hotel butter (No. 581) between each one. For plain serve the above with a clear gravy (No. 404).

← No. 1500 Veal Cutlets with Chicory—Larded Veal No. 1502 Veal Cutlets, Milanese →

For the Modern Kitchen

A plain broiled veal rib chop dressed with parsley-lemon butter, written for a kitchen that had a butcher, a charcoal broiler and a stockpot of reduced veal glaze on hand. Almost all the work is in the butchering.

What to buySix bone-in veal rib chops, cut one to a rib and about 1 to 1 1/4 inches thick — roughly 10-12 oz each. Ask for them frenched, which does in one request what the original spends three clauses on: chain bone removed, the fat cap's skin and membrane stripped, and the rib bone scraped clean so the paper frill can grip it.
"Beat down" means even, not thinThe damp cleaver on a wet table is a non-stick trick. The aim is to level the chop to a uniform thickness so it broils evenly, not to flatten it into a scallop. A few firm taps with the flat of a heavy blade is enough.
A moderate fireMedium coals, or a gas broiler with the grate 4-5 inches from the element. Veal fat is scarce and the meat dries fast, so the intent is a steady browning heat rather than a searing one.
Time versus temperatureSixteen to eighteen minutes will overshoot most modern chops badly. Cook to an internal 145F at the thickest point away from the bone, then rest 5 minutes; on a 1-inch chop that is closer to 10-12 minutes total, turned once at the halfway mark.
GlazeGlazing with a brush means brushing on glace de viande — veal stock reduced to a syrup — for shine and colour. A tablespoon of heavily reduced veal or beef stock does the same job; demi-glace concentrate is the modern shortcut.
Maitre d'hotel butterRanhofer's No. 581 is butter creamed with chopped parsley, salt, pepper and lemon juice. Roll it in parchment, chill it firm, and cut coins to set between the chops so it melts into the platter rather than sliding off.
Crown-shaped, and the frillsThe chops lean bone-outward in a ring on a round platter, each overlapping the last, with a slice of the butter between. Paper frills are decorative only and can be skipped; the original fits them to the handles before the chops are arranged on the serving dish.
YieldSix chops, six servings, with the clear gravy (a plain veal or brown gravy) offered separately for the "plain" version.

A Little History

This is No. 1501 of Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled from his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The book is organised as a professional reference rather than a domestic cookbook, which is why the instructions read as cross-references — the maitre d'hotel butter, the paper frill and the clear gravy all live at their own numbers elsewhere in the volume, and the cook is expected to have them ready. Maitre d'hotel butter is generally traced to early nineteenth-century French practice; the usual explanation of the name, that it belonged to the steward who could finish a dish at the sideboard without a stove, is traditional rather than documented. Either way it was a standard dressing for grilled meats: it supplied fat, acid and greenness in a single cold slice. Veal held a higher place on American restaurant menus then than it does now, and a rack broken down into individual frenched cutlets, crowned on a platter with frills, was as much a piece of table architecture as it was dinner.