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Chicken Cutlets, Islin
Carefully tear skin off a tender two-and-a-half pound chicken, then remove meat and sinews from bird. Have a four-ounce piece raw lean veal, cut chicken and veal in small pieces, place on a clean board and finely chop, adding while chopping, little by little, a half gill thick cream. Place meat in a bowl, add a bread panade, a finely chopped truffle, egg yolk, one and a half teaspoons salt, two saltspoons cayenne and saltspoon grated nutmeg. Briskly stir with wooden spoon for three minutes, then gradually pour in a half gill cream, sharply stirring while adding it. Divide the preparation in twelve equal parts, roll on a lightly floured table to cutlet forms, lightly dip in beaten egg, then roll them in bread crumbs.
Heat two tablespoons clarified butter in a frying pan, place in cutlets one beside another and gently cook for seven minutes on each side. Pour fresh mushroom sauce on a hot dish, arrange cutlets over crown shape, adjust a fancy frill at end of each and serve.
This is a forcemeat, not a cut of meat: a chicken-and-veal mousseline shaped into little chop forms, breaded and pan-fried. The whole thing hinges on keeping the mixture cold while the cream goes in.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so each of the two additions of "half gill thick cream" is 1/4 cup, 1/2 cup in total. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon, which makes the cayenne about 1/2 teaspoon and the nutmeg 1/4 teaspoon. Heavy cream is the right modern stand-in for "thick cream."
- Keep it coldA cream forcemeat breaks if it warms, and the result is greasy and grainy rather than springy. Chill the chopped meat, bowl and cream, and work in short bursts; if the mixture looks slack or beaded, refrigerate it for 20 minutes before continuing.
- ChoppingThe original means hand-chopping on a board, which gives a coarser, meatier texture. A food processor works if you pulse the cold meat to a paste first, then add the cream in two stages with the machine running only briefly each time.
- The panadeNo quantity is given. A panade here is soft white breadcrumb soaked in milk and squeezed nearly dry, or a paste of milk and bread cooked until it leaves the pan; about 1/4 cup packed is right for this amount of meat. Its job is to bind and to keep the cutlets tender.
- TruffleThe recipe calls for one truffle, finely chopped, not specifying which kind; truffles appear frequently in Filippini's dishes and are now a luxury. Preserved truffle peelings or a small quantity of finely chopped rehydrated dried mushroom give the dark fleck and some earthiness; truffle oil does not behave the same way in a fried forcemeat.
- Shaping"Cutlet forms" means flattened teardrops resembling a lamb chop, tapered at one end where the frill goes. Roughly 2 oz each at twelve to the batch. Chill the shaped cutlets on a tray for half an hour after breading so they hold together in the pan.
- Frying and donenessTwo tablespoons of clarified butter is barely enough for twelve; work in batches over medium heat and add more as needed. Seven minutes a side may be more than these need, depending on how thickly you shape them, so watch the colour and take them out at 165F internal.
- ServingTwelve cutlets serve four to six. The "crown shape" is a ring arranged over mushroom sauce pooled on a hot platter; the paper frills are decorative and go on after frying, not before.
Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, filled The International Cook Book (1906) with dishes named for patrons, and "Islin" may well be one of them, perhaps a nod to the Iselin family, prominent in New York banking and society at the time. The dish itself belongs to a well-established French line: côtelettes de volaille, in which a pounded or chopped mousseline of poultry, enriched with cream and bound with panade, is moulded into the shape of a chop and breaded, so that the diner gets the outline of a cutlet with the texture of a quenelle. Lean veal is often added to such forcemeats, and is generally said to help bind the cream in suspension, while the truffle and paper frill mark this out as restaurant cooking of the period rather than family fare.