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Mutton Cutlets and Filet of Veal
(Braciuole di castrato e filetto di vitella) Put in saucepan a slice of ham, some butter, a little bunch composed of carrot, celery and stems of parsley and over this some whole cutlets of mutton seasoned with salt and pepper. Make them brown on both sides, add another piece of butter, if necessary, and add to the cutlets some chicken giblets, sweetbreads and fresh or dry mushrooms (the latter softened in water, all cut in pieces. When all this begins to brown, pour some soup stock and let it simmer on a low fire.
Sprinkle a little flour and finally pour a wineglass (or half a tumbler) of white wine leaving it boil a little more. When ready to serve remove the ham and the greens, rub the gray through a sieve and remove the superfluous fat.
A braise built in one pan, with the sauce made from the browning fond and then pushed through a sieve. Two words in the translation will trip you up before anything else does.
- "Rub the gray through a sieve"A typesetting error for gravy. Lift out the cutlets, then press the pan juices through a sieve to make the sauce; the ham slice and the vegetable bunch are discarded first. The recipe does not say what becomes of the giblets, sweetbreads and mushrooms — they read as a garnish to be served with the meat.
- The "little bunch"This is a mazzetto — carrot, celery and parsley stems tied with string so they can be fished out whole. Tie it, or the sieving step becomes tedious.
- Wine measureA wineglass in this period is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz and a tumbler at about 8, so the two alternatives the recipe offers as equivalent are only loosely so. Take it as somewhere between 2 and 4 fl oz.
- Mutton cutletsTrue mutton (sheep over two years) is a special order from a butcher. Lamb shoulder or rib chops behave similarly but cook faster and taste milder; adjust the simmer to the meat, not the clock.
- Simmering timeThe recipe gives none. Reckon on a long, bare simmer for mutton cutlets — an hour or more — and considerably less for lamb chops. The flour and wine go in near the end, as the recipe has them.
- Sweetbreads and gibletsSweetbreads should be soaked in cold water an hour, then blanched briefly and the membrane peeled before they go in the pan. "Giblets" here means hearts, gizzards and livers; add the livers late, since they turn grainy with long cooking.
- Dried mushroomsSoak in warm water 20 minutes and strain the liquid through a coffee filter — the grit settles, and the soaking water is worth adding to the stock.
- Fat and stockWith ham, butter added twice and giblets, this sauce carries a lot of fat. Chill the sieved sauce briefly if you want the fat to lift off cleanly rather than skimming it hot.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities, so scale by the number of cutlets you want to serve. The title's filet of veal appears to be an alternative cut rather than a second ingredient — the body of the recipe never mentions veal, and the same method would take a whole veal filet.
Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) overlaps closely with Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene, and this entry has the Artusi manner: a single unbroken paragraph, no quantities, no times, and the assumption that the cook already knows what a braise looks like when it is ready. The dish belongs to the nineteenth-century Italian domestic repertoire of umidi — meats browned in a fatty base with ham and a vegetable bundle, then moistened with broth and finished with wine — and its garnish of giblets, sweetbreads and mushrooms uses the sort of offcuts a household was likely to have on hand. Mutton points to the period: sheep were commonly kept for wool and milk and eaten mature, so recipes assumed a strong-flavoured meat that needed long, gentle cooking and a sauce assertive enough to meet it.