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Meat Genovese
(Carne alla Genovese) Take thick slices of good lean veal, weighing about a pound, beat it and flatten it well. Beat three or four eggs, season them with salt and pepper, a pinch of grated cheese and some chopped parsley. Fry the eggs in butter in the form of an omelet about the size of the meat over which it will be laid, cutting it where it overlaps and putting the pieces where it lacks so as to cover the meat entirely. After that roll tight the meat together with the omelet and tie it with thread. Then sprinkle some flour over it and put it in a saucepan with a piece of butter, seasoning with salt and pepper. When it is well browned on all sides, pour some soup stock to complete the cooking and serve it in its gravy which will be thick enough on account of the gravy. 87
A rolled and braised veal roll — essentially a small rollata — with an omelet standing in for the more usual stuffing of bread and herbs. The method is sound; the vagueness is all in the cuts and timings.
- The cut of veal"Thick slices... weighing about a pound" means one or two slices from the leg or top round, pounded out. Ask the butcher for veal scallopine cut thick, or a single slice butterflied, and beat it to an even quarter inch so it rolls without cracking.
- Grated cheeseMost likely Parmigiano or another hard grana. The original asks only for a pinch for three or four eggs; it seasons the omelet rather than filling it. Do not substitute a melting cheese, which will run out of the roll.
- Make the omelet flat and dryThis is a thin flat omelet, not a folded one — cook it gently in butter until just set, no browning, then slide it out and let it cool before laying it on the meat. A hot or wet omelet tears when the roll is tightened.
- Tie with kitchen twine"Thread" here means cooking thread; use undyed cotton butcher's twine, tied at intervals of about an inch and a half. Tie firmly rather than tight — the roll swells slightly as it cooks and thin string will cut into it.
- Browning, then the stockBrown on all sides over medium-high heat in butter, then add stock to come roughly halfway up the roll, cover, and simmer gently. A one-pound roll takes about 45 minutes to an hour at a bare bubble; veal toughens if the liquid boils hard.
- The gravyThe closing line is garbled in the original — the sauce thickens from the flour dusted on the meat, not from anything else. If it stays thin, lift out the roll and reduce the liquid uncovered for a few minutes.
- Resting and slicingLet the roll sit five to ten minutes before cutting the strings, then slice across into rounds so each shows the spiral of omelet. Cutting it hot makes the slices fall apart.
- YieldA pound of veal with three or four eggs serves two generously, three modestly, with the pan gravy spooned over.
This comes from The Italian Cook Book (1919), one of a wave of English-language Italian cookbooks published for American households in the decades after Italian immigration to the United States peaked in the years before the First World War, as Italian food began moving from the tenement kitchen into the general market. The dish belongs to the broad family of Italian meat rolls — rollè, braciolone, arrosto arrotolato, farsumagru in Sicily — in which a flattened sheet of meat is spread with a filling, rolled, tied and braised so that each slice shows a spiral. The omelet filling is a thrifty and characteristically Ligurian touch. Whether the name records a genuine Ligurian origin or simply the compiler's shorthand for "in the Genoese manner" is not documented; regional labels in books of this period were often loose.