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Cutlets of Chopped Meat
(Scaloppine di carne battuta) Take some good lean beef, clean it well, removing all little skins and tendons, then first chop and after grind the meat fine in the grinder. Season with salt, pepper and a pinch of grated cheese. Mix well and give the meat the form of a ball then with bread crumbs over and beneath flatten it with the rolling pin on the bread board making a sheet of meat as thick as a silver dollar. Cut it in square pieces, as large as the palm of the hand and cook in a saucepan with butter. When these cutlets are browned, pour over some tomato sauce and serve.
If you prefer, use your hands instead of the rolling pin and then you can give them the shapes you like.
If you have some left over meat this can perfectly well be mixed with the raw meat and chopped and ground together. 75
A frugal cutlet made from ground beef pressed flat rather than a sliced scaloppine. The whole thing hinges on getting the sheet thin and even, then cooking it fast.
- "As thick as a silver dollar"The coin runs about 2.5 mm, so aim for roughly 2-3 mm. Any thicker and the cutlets behave like burgers rather than scaloppine, and the fast browning the recipe depends on will overcook the interior.
- Grated cheeseMost likely Parmesan or a comparable hard grating cheese; the recipe does not specify. A tablespoon or two per pound is enough; more and the cheese weeps and sticks the meat to the pan.
- Rolling out between crumbsThe bread crumbs are there as a release agent, not a coating. Dust the board and the top of the meat generously, or work between two sheets of parchment, which is easier and gives a more even sheet.
- GrindingChopping and then grinding is one job for a food processor pulsed in short bursts, or ask for a coarse single grind of chuck or top round. Very lean beef makes a dry cutlet; something around 15 percent fat holds together better.
- The pan"A saucepan with butter" means a wide skillet, hot, with enough butter to film the bottom. Butter alone browns fast at this heat, so add a little oil or use clarified butter if the pan runs dark.
- TimingAt 3 mm these need roughly a minute a side over medium-high heat. Ground beef should reach 160F, which happens almost immediately at this thickness; long cooking only dries it out.
- The tomato sauceAdd it off the heat or in the last moment, just to coat. The book's own tomato sauce is a plain simmered one; about a cup serves a pound of meat.
- Leftover meatWorking cooked scraps into the raw beef is sound, but keep them to about a third of the total or the cutlets crumble when turned. Chill the mixture before rolling to firm it.
This comes from Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919), a slim American volume aimed at cooks who wanted Italian food on a modest budget. Scaloppine di carne battuta translates as "cutlets of beaten meat," and the name is a deliberate borrowing: a true scaloppina is a thin slice cut from a whole muscle, usually veal, while this version manufactures the same shape out of cheap ground beef and yesterday's roast. Recipes of this kind sit between the meatball and the cutlet, and they belong to the long tradition of Italian household cooking that treats leftover boiled or roasted meat as an ingredient in its own right rather than something to be reheated. The instruction to flatten the meat with a rolling pin on the bread board, and the offer to shape it by hand instead, tells you the book expected no special equipment beyond a grinder, which it simply assumed the cook would have to hand.