Home › The World's Kitchen › Cutlets of Turkey, Esperance
Cutlets of Turkey, Esperance
Pick off meat from the turkey left over from yesterday and cut in very small dice, with two ounces cooked ham cut same way and twelve canned mushrooms, also cut same way. Have a tablespoon freshly chopped shallots in saucepan with one ounce butter and fry for three minutes, stirring well meanwhile; dredge in two ounces flour, stir while heating for two minutes, pour in a pint white broth, one teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne and one saltspoon grated nutmeg. Mix well until it comes to a boil, then let slowly boil for fifteen minutes, occasionally mixing meanwhile. Add two egg yolks, mix well, then add the chicken, ham and mushrooms, also half a gill sherry. Mix well and cook for ten minutes, frequently mixing meanwhile, remove, place the force in a dish and let cool off. Lightly flour corner of table, divide the force into six even parts and neatly roll out to cutlet forms, dip in beaten egg, then gently roll in fresh bread crumbs, lay in frying basket, fry in boiling fat for eight minutes and thoroughly drain. Pour a gill demi-glace on a hot dish, dress cutlets over, one overlapping another crown-like, arrange fresh string beans in center of the crown, adjust a paper frill at end of each cutlet and serve.
This is a croquette mixture shaped into cutlets — a thick velouté bound with egg yolk, loaded with diced cooked meat, chilled firm, breaded and deep-fried. Most of the work is in the chilling.
- The hinge: chill the force hard"Let cool off" understates it. The mixture must be spread in a shallow pan, covered and refrigerated until cold and stiff — at least four hours and preferably overnight — or it will not hold a cutlet shape and will burst in the fat.
- Old measuresA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of sherry is 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) and the gill of demi-glace is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon, which makes the cayenne roughly 1/2 teaspoon — assertive but not absurd; start with half that if you are unsure.
- White brothA pale unroasted stock, veal or chicken. Any light, unsalted chicken stock works. With 2 oz butter-cooked flour to a pint of liquid this is a very stiff panada, and it should be: it is the glue.
- Egg yolks off the heatPull the pan from the burner before stirring in the yolks, then return it to low heat. Dropped into a boiling sauce they scramble, and the specks show in the finished cutlet.
- Frying timeEight minutes in "boiling fat" is far too long for a mixture that is already cooked. At 350-375F the cutlets need 3 to 4 minutes — just until the crumb is deep gold and the center is hot. Longer and the sauce inside liquefies and blows out the coating.
- Canned mushroomsPeriod canned button mushrooms were mild and already soft. Fresh mushrooms substitute well but should be diced and sauteed dry until their water has gone, or they will loosen the mixture.
- Demi-glace and the frillDemi-glace is a reduced brown sauce; a good jarred one or a reduced beef stock does the job. The paper frills stand in for a bone end — decorative only, and easily skipped.
- YieldSix cutlets, serving three as a main course or six as a first course. "The chicken" in the mixing step is a slip for the turkey.
Croquettes moulded into the shape of a chop, complete with a paper frill standing in for the bone, were a standing feature of hotel and club cookery on both sides of the Atlantic — a way of turning yesterday's roast into something that could be sent out under a French name. The International Cook Book belongs to that professional tradition, and the opening instruction to pick the meat "from the turkey left over from yesterday" is unusually candid about it. The name Esperance (French for hope) follows the era's habit of attaching a proper noun to a particular arrangement of sauce and vegetable; such names are often said to have been coined for a hotel, a ship, a patron or a house dish rather than describing anything about the food, and many never acquired a fixed definition outside the book that printed them.