Veal Cutlets, Milanese Style

History

The breaded veal cutlet Artusi codifies here belongs to Milan's oldest culinary lore. Its traditional form is a bone-in veal rib chop—la costoletta—breaded and fried in butter, later nicknamed oreggia d'elefant, "elephant's ear," for its broad flattened shape. A medieval Milanese record of "lombolos cum panitio" is sometimes named as the dish's earliest ancestor. We have dropped that account: Verri, who preserves the phrase, says plainly that neither he nor the scholar before him could work out what these dishes were — so the gloss that made it a breaded loin, and the claim of descent resting on it, are ours rather than the record's. Artusi's 1891 version (no. 538) is not the plain cutlet but a dressed-up one: the meat is spread with a battuto of prosciutto, parsley, grated parmigiano and, when available, truffle, then dipped in egg, breaded, sauteed in butter and served with lemon. The dish's fame is entangled with the Wiener schnitzel, and which city holds priority is genuinely unresolved. The often-repeated tale that Marshal Radetzky carried the Milanese cutlet to Vienna is now discredited: it traces to Felice Cunsolo's 1969 gastronomic guidebook and was debunked by food historian Heinz Dieter Pohl, while Viennese recipes already titled Wiener Schnitzel appear in Neudecker's book of 1831 and Kraft's of 1835. The record does not settle which table came first; Artusi simply presents the cutlet as thoroughly Milanese, offering an enriched version rather than a claim of origin.

Ingredients

• 5 milk-fed veal cutlets (bone-in)
• 50 g prosciutto (more fat than lean)
• parsley
• 2 heaped spoonfuls grated Parmesan
• truffles
• salt and pepper
• egg
• breadcrumbs
• butter
• lemon wedges

Instructions

1. Bare and trim the rib bone; flatten the cutlets thin with a knife blade.
2. Make a paste of prosciutto (mostly fat), a little parsley, grated Parmesan, optional truffle scent, and a little salt and pepper; spread it on one side of each cutlet.
3. Dip in egg, bread, and cook sautè in butter.
4. Serve with lemon wedges. For 5 cutlets: about 50 g prosciutto and 2 heaped spoonfuls Parmesan.