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Winchester Cutlets
(England.) Mix 1/2 pound of cold minced chicken, veal or lamb, with 1/2 pound bread-crumbs, 1 ounce butter, yolk of one egg, salt, parsley, and a spoonful of flour. Mould into chops, put a bit of macaroni in the end of each, to imitate a bone, dip in eggs and bread-crumbs, and fry brown. Serve with tomato sauce or a puree of spinach.
A Victorian way of turning yesterday's roast into something that looks like a chop. The shaping and the chilling matter more than anything else here.
- Chill before breadingThe mixture is soft and will slump in the pan. Mould the chops, refrigerate them at least 30 minutes until firm, then egg and crumb them. Frying warm, loose mixture is the usual reason these fall apart.
- The crumb ratio is heavyEqual weights of meat and bread-crumbs give a very bready cutlet by modern taste. Half the crumb, about 4 oz to 8 oz of meat, holds together fine and tastes far more of the meat.
- "A spoonful of flour"Ambiguous in the original; a tablespoon is the sensible reading and is enough to bind. It is there as a binder, not a thickener, so do not increase it.
- ButterOne ounce is 2 tablespoons. Soften or melt it so it disperses through the cold mixture rather than sitting in lumps.
- The meat must already be cookedThis is a leftovers dish: cold roast chicken, veal or lamb, minced fine. Raw meat would not cook through in the short fry.
- The macaroni "bone"Use a short length of dry, uncooked tubular macaroni pushed into the narrow end. It stays rigid and pale and reads as a bone; cooked macaroni goes limp and disappears. It is decoration, not to be eaten.
- FryingThe original says only 'fry brown'. In a modern kitchen, shallow-frying in about half an inch of fat over moderate heat, three to four minutes a side until the crumb is deep gold, will do it. The filling is cooked meat, so you are only heating through and colouring the coating.
- YieldA pound of mixture gives about eight cutlets, enough for four with the tomato sauce or spinach puree. Either sauce is wanted for moisture as much as flavour.
Cutlets like these belong to a large Victorian and Edwardian family of "made dishes" whose purpose was to give cold roast meat a second, more presentable life. The cutlet shape and the stub of macaroni standing in for a bone were standard tricks of the period, appearing under names like mock cutlets and meat croquettes; the point was that a dish assembled from scraps should arrive at table looking like a cut of meat in its own right. The recipe is tagged "(England.)" in the original; where the name Winchester comes from is not clear, and no link to the town or its kitchens is documented.