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Veal Cutlets Stewed
(Scaloppine alla Genovese) Cut some lean veal meat into slices and, supposing it be a pound or a little more, without bones, chop one fourth of a middle-sized onion and put it in a saucepan with oil and a little piece of butter. Put over the cutlets, one layer over the other, season with salt and butter and put on the fire. When the meat which is below is browned put in a teaspoonful of flour and after a while a hash of parsley with half a clove of garlic. Then detach the cutlets the one from the other, mix them, let them drink in the sauce, then pour hot water and a little tomato sauce. Make it boil slowly and not much to complete the cooking and serve with abundant sauce and with little diamonds of toast. 76
A one-pan veal braise from Maria Gentile's translation, written in the loose style of Italian household books of the period: no times, no temperatures, and one instruction doing a lot of work. The point to get right is the layering — the cutlets go in stacked, not spread out, and are separated only after the bottom layer has browned.
- The hinge: stack, then separatePiling the slices one over another means only the bottom layer touches the pan and browns while the rest steam above it. Wait for that browning before you break them apart and stir in the flour; if you spread everything out at once you get grey, weeping veal instead of fond in the pan.
- What cut to buy"Lean veal meat in slices" means scaloppine — usually leg or top round cut across the grain and sliced thin. The recipe gives no thickness and says nothing about pounding. A pound will yield roughly four to six slices.
- "Season with salt and butter"Almost certainly a translation slip for salt and pepper; the butter is already accounted for in the pan. Use both, and go light on salt since the sauce reduces.
- Fat quantitiesThe original gives none. Two tablespoons oil and a tablespoon of butter suits a 10- to 12-inch pan; the butter is there for flavour and browning, the oil to keep it from burning.
- The flourOne teaspoon for a pound of meat is a light binder, not a roux. Sprinkle it over the browned meat and let it cook a minute in the fat before any liquid goes in, or the sauce tastes pasty.
- Liquid and timingAdd hot water to come about halfway up the meat, plus two or three tablespoons of tomato sauce. Thin scaloppine need 10 to 15 minutes at a bare simmer — the "boil slowly and not much" is meant literally. Longer and thin veal turns stringy.
- Little diamonds of toastCrostini: white bread, crusts off, cut into diamonds and toasted as the recipe says, arranged round the platter to take up the sauce. Cut them before the meat goes on the fire.
- Garlic and parsleyHalf a clove is as written, not a misprint. Note that the parsley and garlic go in before the liquid, so they cook through the braise rather than staying fresh and green.
This appears in The Italian Cook Book (1919), Maria Gentile's English rendering of Italian domestic cookery for American readers, and the wording still carries the shape of the Italian original — "let them drink in the sauce" reads as a literal rendering of the Italian. Scaloppine is a diminutive of scaloppa, a thin slice cut across the grain, and the qualifier alla Genovese in this instance points to the olive oil, garlic and parsley associated with Ligurian cooking, where oil rather than butter was more often the default fat — though this recipe uses both. The small amount of tomato is characteristic of the period: tomato had become ordinary in Italian kitchens by the late nineteenth century but was still often used as a seasoning and colouring rather than the body of a sauce.