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Veal Cutlets, Tomato Sauce
Pare nicely and flatten six rib veal cutlets. Season with a teaspoon salt and half a teaspoon white pepper, evenly divided. Roll them in beaten-up egg, then lightly roll in bread crumbs mixed with a tablespoon grated Parmesan or Swiss cheese.
Heat one ounce butter in a sautoire and fry the cutlets for five minutes on each side; then place in the hot oven for eight minutes. Dress on a hot dish, one overlapping another, and serve with a gill of hot tomato sauce in a saucebowl separately.
A plain breaded veal cutlet, closer to a cotoletta than a Wiener schnitzel because of the cheese in the crumbs. The main thing to fix is the cooking time.
- Total cooking timeFive minutes a side plus eight minutes in the oven is far too long for a flattened rib cutlet, which will be cooked through in three to four minutes a side and dry out after that. Either pound thin and pan-fry only, or keep the cutlets thicker (about 3/4 inch) if you want to finish them in the oven for a few minutes.
- "Hot oven"Read as roughly 400-450F. At that heat the cheese-and-crumb coating browns fast, so the oven stage is for finishing thickness rather than for colour.
- A gillHalf a cup, which is about right as a sauce served separately alongside six cutlets rather than poured over them.
- SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan. Any wide heavy skillet works; the point is that the cutlets lie flat in one layer without crowding, which may mean cooking in two batches.
- One ounce of butterTwo tablespoons will not carry six cutlets, and butter alone at frying heat will brown and burn before the second batch. Use more fat, or butter with a spoonful of neutral oil, and wipe the pan between batches.
- The cheese in the crumbsGrated Parmesan or Swiss scorches faster than plain crumbs. Keep the pan at a steady medium rather than high heat, and press the crumbs on firmly so the coating stays intact when the cutlets are turned.
- White pepperConventionally chosen to keep dark flecks out of a pale coating. Black pepper can be substituted, at the cost of the appearance and with a somewhat different flavour.
- YieldSix cutlets, one per person. The tomato sauce is made separately; a simple cooked tomato sauce, thin enough to pour from a boat, suits the way it is served here.
The dish sits at the meeting point of two traditions: the Milanese cotoletta, a breaded veal rib chop fried in butter, and the Austrian schnitzel, which is generally traced to the same practice of crumbing and frying thin veal. The grated Parmesan or Swiss in the crumbs is the Italian side of the family showing, and the tomato sauce is served apart in a boat rather than under or over the meat. Veal cutlets were a staple of hotel and restaurant cookery around 1900 because they cooked to order in minutes, and international cookbooks of the era reproduced them repeatedly with only the garnish changed.