🧪 Bad Science 1913

Veal Chops (forcemeat-coated)

Seared deliberately without cooking through, coated in raw pork and raw yolk, then ten minutes in the oven.

From: The Story of Crisco
Published: 1913
Yikes Scale: Yikes

Exactly as printed, 1913

Menu: Cream of Peanut Soup; Veal Chops; Mashed Potatoes String Beans; Onion Salad; Meringues Filled with Custard; Coffee Veal Chops-Trim neatly 8 chops and put into frying pan with 4 tablespoons Crisco, and fry over quick fire a nice brown color. As the meat will afterwards be cooked again, the frying process should be done quickly without actually cooking the chops. Place them between 2 boards, put weight not too heavy over top, and keep them until cold. Strain Crisco, and keep for further use. Cut 1/2 cup pork and 1/2 cup beef marrow into small pieces, pound in mortar; when fine, add 1 tablespoon anchovy paste, 1 teaspoon powdered savory herbs, 1 yolk egg, and piece of Crisco about size of nutmeg. Pound thoroughly until smooth, season with pepper and salt, rub through sieve, and cover side of each chop thickly with this. Put them on Criscoed baking sheet, cover with few fried breadcrumbs, sprinkle with melted Crisco and place in hot oven for 10 minutes. Dish up chops in circle on hot dish, and serve.

The Story of Crisco, 1913. Public domain; transcription unaltered.

So what happens if I make it?

The recipe is explicit that the searing must not cook the meat, because it will be cooked again later. The later cooking is ten minutes.

The coating is raw pork bound with raw yolk, spread thick, going into the oven cold from being pressed under a weight. Ten minutes at a hot-oven temperature browns the crust and may leave the middle of that paste short of safe.

Notes from the 21st century

Use a thermometer. The forcemeat needs to reach 160°F throughout. From cold and thickly spread, that will take considerably longer than ten minutes.
“Hot oven” means roughly 400–450°F. The book gives no number, as was standard. The conventional reading of the phrase is that range.
The pressing is a good technique. Cooling the chops flat under a weight makes them easy to coat evenly. That part is worth keeping.

Also in this book

Terrapin, a la Maryland — Boil the terrapin whole, draw the nails from its feet, and leave the liver and intestines in the dish.

Don't take our word for it. The complete book is online, free and searchable.

Read the original page →

More bad science

See all

Raw Marrow for the Bloodless

Marrow from “animals, freshly killed,” administered to bloodless patients “to stimulate their fresh blood formation.” The logic is that marrow makes blood, so eat marrow.

🧪 Bad Science Yikes

Meals Medicinal · 1905

Sulphuric-Acid Fumigation of Tainted Meat

Meat going off? Suspend it over a bowl of salt, add two ounces of sulphuric acid by degrees, and let the fumes work. “Care must be taken not to breathe them.”

🧪 Bad Science Call poison control

Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book · 1914

Test Pickles for Copper

Chop the pickle into ammonia and watch for deep blue — proof it was “cooked in brass or copper kettles.” A routine kitchen test, because it happened constantly.

🧪 Bad Science Big yikes

Household Discoveries and Mrs. Curtis's Cook Book · 1914