Saltimbocca, Roman Style

History

*Saltimbocca* means "jumps in the mouth," and the dish reads today as thoroughly Roman. Its parentage is contested, though. Several writers trace it north to Brescia and credit Rome less with inventing it than with adopting it and spreading it through the city's taverns.

Artusi's 1891 recipe sits early in the written trail, and he is unusually direct about how he came by it: he ate them in Rome, at a trattoria called Le Venete, and says that is why he can describe them exactly. His version is spare. Thin milk-fed veal is seasoned lightly with salt and pepper, half a sage leaf goes on each slice — a whole one, he notes, would be too much — and a slice of prosciutto on top of that. The three are pinned together with a toothpick and cooked in butter, left only briefly on the ham side so the meat stays tender. The white-wine finish and the poultry or pork substitutions common elsewhere came later.

The record does not settle whether Brescia or Rome can claim the dish first. An earlier version of this note gave Le Venete a street address; Artusi names the city and the trattoria and no more, so the street has been removed. The Brescian attribution and the later Roman cookbook that called the dish an incomer we learned from popular reference and food-writing sources, and we were unable to locate the evidence they rest on.

Ingredients

• 300 g lean milk-fed veal
• sage
• prosciutto (fatty and lean)
• butter
• salt and pepper

Instructions

1. Cut milk-fed veal into thin cutlets (about half a finger thick), moisten, flatten, and season lightly with salt and pepper.
2. Top each with half a sage leaf and a thin slice of fatty-and-lean prosciutto, securing with a toothpick.
3. Cook in butter in a sauté pan, keeping the prosciutto side on the heat only briefly so it stays tender; serve with any garnish.