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Stuffed Beef Cutlet
Braciuola di manzo ripiena) The ingredients for this dish are a slice of beef half an inch thick, weighing about one pound, half a pound or less of lean milk veal, two small slices of ham and two or three of tongue, one scant tablespooful of grated cheese, a piece of butter, two chicken livers, one egg, a crumb of bread as large as a closed fist.
Make a hash with a small onion, a little celery, carrot and parsley, put it on the fire with the butter and when it is browned, place in the saucepan the veal cut in small pieces and the chicken livers, season with little salt and pepper and complete the cooking with a little broth. Remove the veal and chicken when cooked, and chop them fine. In the gravy that remains make a pap rather hard with the crumb of bread, moistening with broth if necessary. Now mix the chopped meat, the pap, the eggs, the cheese, the ham and tongue cut in little pieces. When the stuffing is composed thus, dip the cutlet in water, in order to stretch it better, beat it with the back of the knife and flatten with its blades. Put the stuffing inside and roll up and tie tightly with a string crosswise. Roast or bake with oil and salt. 139
A rolled and stuffed beef roll of the kind still sold in Italian butcher shops as braciola or involtino. The recipe assumes you know how to butterfly and pound meat, and it is vague about liquid and heat, so a few numbers help.
- The hinge: pound the beef thin and evenA half-inch slice of round will not roll around this quantity of stuffing unless it is beaten out to roughly a quarter inch and a rough rectangle. The recipe has you dip the cutlet in water first, "in order to stretch it better," then beat it with the back of the knife and flatten it with the blade; a mallet does the same work.
- Which cut of beefAsk for a single slice cut with the grain from top round or bottom round, about 1 lb, taken as one broad piece rather than two. Flank cut open also works and slices handsomely.
- "Lean milk veal"Milk-fed veal, i.e. pale veal from an unweaned calf. Shoulder or leg is fine here; it is going to be browned and then chopped, so a cheap cut is correct.
- "Make a hash" of the vegetablesThis means a battuto: onion, celery, carrot and parsley chopped very fine together, not a cooked hash. Sweat and lightly brown it in the butter before the veal goes in.
- "A pap rather hard"A panade. Tear the crumb of a fist-sized piece of stale bread into the pan gravy and work it to a stiff paste, adding broth by the spoonful. If it is loose the filling will leak out of the roll during roasting.
- Broth and eggNo quantity of broth is given; you will need perhaps half a cup to braise the veal and livers, plus a little more for the panade. The ingredient list says one egg while the method says "the eggs"; one whole egg is enough to bind this quantity.
- Grated cheeseParmigiano-Reggiano or grana. A scant tablespoon is a seasoning, not a filler; resist adding more or the stuffing tightens as it cooks.
- Tying and cookingRoll from a short end and tie crosswise at inch intervals with butcher's twine. Brown the roll in oil on all sides, then bake at 325-350F, basting, for about 1 to 1 1/4 hours, until the centre reaches 145-150F. A little wine or broth in the pan keeps the fond from burning.
- Resting and servingRest 15 minutes before cutting the strings, then slice about half an inch thick so each round shows the spiral of stuffing. Serves four as a second course, with the pan juices spooned over.
The Italian Cook Book (1919), compiled by Maria Gentile, drew heavily on Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene. The word braciuola is itself a small map of Italy: in Tuscany a braciola is usually a chop or a plain cutlet, while further south it names exactly this thing, a thin slice of meat wrapped around a filling and tied — the dish that Italian-American kitchens would come to call braciole. The stuffing here is a frugal luxury typical of the period: scraps of ham and tongue, two chicken livers, a spoonful of grated cheese and a fist of stale bread, all bound with the gravy the veal cooked in, so that a single pound of beef feeds a table. Nothing is wasted, and the bread panade does the work that a modern cook might hand to breadcrumbs from a box.