Veal Cutlet
1½ pounds veal cutlet Fine dry bread crumbs 1 egg Salt and pepper Order the veal cut one-half inch thick and pound it until quite thin. Cut in pieces for serving, dust with salt and pepper, dip in fine dry bread crumbs, then in an egg beaten with one-half cup cold milk, then in crumbs again. Fry in deep Mazola heated to 350 degree F. or until a bit of bread will brown in sixty counts. Drain on crumpled paper and serve with creamed noodles, and spinach garnished with hard-cooked egg.
A plain breaded cutlet from a corn-oil promotional cookbook, with one typographical casualty in the ingredient list. The frying temperature is already given in degrees, which is unusual for the period and worth taking at face value.
- The amount of vealThe list reads "1/2 pounds veal cutlet"; the plural "pounds" suggests a dropped numeral, most likely 1 1/2 pounds. The recipe gives no yield.
- Mazola is corn oilMazola was and is a refined corn oil, sold in these booklets as a neutral deep-frying fat. Any refined oil with a smoke point above 400F substitutes directly; the recipe's purpose was to sell the brand, not to require it.
- The sixty-count testA bread cube browning in sixty counts is the period's way of confirming roughly 350F. A thermometer is faster and more reliable, and 350F for thin cutlets is still correct.
- Crumb, egg, crumbThe order departs from the more familiar flour, egg, crumb: seasoned meat into dry crumbs first, then the egg wash, then crumbs again. In practice the initial dry coat gives the egg something to grip, and the double layer makes for a sturdier crust.
- Pound thin, then cook fastPounded out from half an inch, the pieces will be thin enough to cook through in only a few minutes in hot fat. Veal this thin goes dry and stringy well before the crust darkens further.
- Draining"Crumpled paper" was newsprint or brown paper; use paper towels or, better, a wire rack so the underside crust does not steam.
- The suggested plateCreamed noodles and spinach with chopped hard-cooked egg make up the whole dinner course. Lemon wedges, which the recipe omits, cut the fried oil and are usual with breaded veal.
Booklets like this one were published by cooking-oil and cornstarch manufacturers to teach American households a fat they had no tradition of using; Mazola corn oil is generally traced to the Corn Products Refining Company in the early twentieth century, and its recipe pamphlets pushed deep-frying as clean, modern and odorless in contrast to lard or drippings. The dish itself is the American descendant of the German and Austrian breaded veal cutlet, the same lineage as Wiener schnitzel, which arrived with Central European immigrants and settled into hotel and home menus as plain "veal cutlet." The double crumbing and the egg thinned with milk are often read as an economizing American touch, stretching a little egg across the meat and producing a thicker, sturdier crust than the classical schnitzel, which is coated once and fried in shallow butter or lard rather than submerged in oil.