No. 2478

Veal Cutlets a l'Anacreon

Cotelettes de Veau a l'Anacreon

Lard some veal cutlets cut from a rack with tongue and fat pork, a half of each; braiso or poeler them while basting frequently, then lay them under a weight to reduce to five-eighths of an inch in thickness; pare neatly and cover over with cream forcemeat (No. 75), and decorate with a handsome truffle rosette; range a buttered paper on top of each and poach in a slack oven; when cold mask the surfaces with half-set jelly and dress flat in a circle, filling the center with an asparagus salad (No. 2621); surround with chopped jelly and croutons.

← No. 2477 Cutlets of Pheasant in Chaudfroid The Cold Service No. 2479 Cutlets of Woodcock, Poniatowski →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cold-buffet piece from Ranhofer's Delmonico's kitchen, built in stages over two days. Nothing here is difficult, but the recipe assumes you already know the house methods it cross-references.

Read the cross-references firstNo. 75 is Ranhofer's cream forcemeat, a pounded white-meat quenelle mixture lightened with cream, which today means a food processor and a sieve. No. 2621 is his asparagus salad. Without both, the recipe is only an outline.
Larding"Lard some veal cutlets cut from a rack with tongue and fat pork, a half of each" means threading alternating strips of cooked tongue and firm back fat through the meat with a larding needle. In a cold, sliced dish the pattern the strips show counts for at least as much as the moisture they give.
Braiser or poêlerBraising is with liquid and a lid; poêler is butter-roasting in a covered pan with aromatics and almost no liquid. Either is done here to cook the veal through gently, not to brown it hard — the surface has to take forcemeat later.
PressingCooling under a weight to five-eighths of an inch (about 1.5 cm) is what makes the cutlets uniform enough to sit flat in a ring. Do it while still warm, on a tray with a second tray and a few cans on top, and leave it until cold.
Slack ovenAround 275-300F. The forcemeat coating is being set, not baked, and the buttered paper is there to stop it drying or colouring. Take it out when the forcemeat is firm to the touch and reads about 165F; overcooking makes it grainy and it will weep under the jelly.
Half-set jellyAspic cooled until it coats a spoon and is beginning to thicken — roughly the consistency of raw egg white. Too warm and it runs off the forcemeat, too cold and it goes lumpy. Work over ice and expect to rewarm the bowl once or twice.
Truffle rosette and croutonsThe truffle is cut in thin discs and overlapped into a flower before the paper goes on. The "croutons" of the garnish are almost certainly firm aspic cut into neat triangles or crescents rather than fried bread, though the recipe does not specify.
ServingA rack of veal yields six to eight cutlets, which is the sensible scale for the circular presentation. Assemble no more than a few hours ahead, keep it refrigerated, and bring it out only just before it is wanted — the jelly slumps quickly in a warm room.

A Little History

Anacreon was a Greek lyric poet of the sixth century BC whose surviving verses are largely about wine and love, and by the nineteenth century his name was used as a byword for cultivated pleasure at table; nineteenth-century French kitchens handed out such labels freely, and the dish tells you more about Delmonico's clientele than about any Greek. It comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it sits in the cold service section — the part of the book that supplied the great mirrored buffets of the period, where food was cooked ahead, pressed, coated in forcemeat, glazed with aspic and arranged in geometric rings. The technique of masking cold meat with a pale forcemeat and sealing it under jelly belongs to the chaudfroid tradition codified by the early nineteenth-century French kitchen; it survived into the twentieth century in hotel garde-manger work and then largely disappeared, along with the labour it required.