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Veal Cutlets, with Tomato Sauce
Dip in beaten egg when you have sprinkled a little pepper, and salt over them; then roll in bread crumbs, fry slowly in butter or fine beef suet, cover tightly, for a short time, remove the cover and let them brown, but not dry; serve on a hot platter with tomato sauce.
A compact set of instructions for breaded veal that assumes you already know how to cut and pound a cutlet. The hinge is the covered stage: it steams the meat through gently before the lid comes off for colour.
- Cut and thicknessNineteenth-century American cookbooks generally meant a slice from the leg by "veal cutlet," thicker than the paper-thin scaloppine sold today, often something like half an inch. Leg or loin pounded to about 1/4 to 1/3 inch works; much thinner and it will overcook before it browns.
- The two-stage cookFry gently, cover for a few minutes so the veal cooks through in its own steam, then uncover and raise the heat to set the crust. If you brown first and cover afterwards, the crumbs soften and slide off.
- "Fry slowly"Moderate to low heat; the fat should sizzle steadily without smoking. Butter alone browns too fast at higher heat; a mix of butter and a neutral oil, or the beef suet the book offers as an alternative, holds up better.
- Fine beef suetSuet is the hard fat from around the kidneys; rendered down it becomes tallow. It fries well and takes more heat than whole butter; clarified butter or a butter-oil blend will stand in.
- DonenessA few minutes covered and a few more uncovered will do for cutlets of this thickness; times vary with the pan and the fat. Cook to about 145F internal and let them rest -- veal dries and toughens fast past that, which is what "but not dry" is guarding against.
- Breading that stays putThe original goes egg then crumbs. Patting the cutlets dry and dusting them with flour before the egg gives a noticeably more durable coating.
- Tomato saucePresumably a tomato sauce given elsewhere in the volume. Any smooth, well-reduced tomato sauce serves.
- YieldFigure one 5-6 oz cutlet per person; 4 cutlets, about 1 1/2 lb, feeds four with a starch alongside.
Breaded veal fried in butter and sauced with tomato is a thread that runs through nineteenth-century American cookery from several directions at once: the German and Austrian schnitzel tradition carried in by immigrants, and the French côtelette de veau panée of the cookbook writers. A household book like this one treats veal as an everyday meat rather than a luxury. The tomato sauce is a marker of the period too, by then a familiar rather than a suspect or exotic element in American kitchens. The terse style here is characteristic of the genre: the writer assumes a cook who has made tomato sauce a hundred times and only needs reminding of the order of operations.