"French Home Cooking: Some Cryptic Suggestions"

The same evening as we made the ginger cookies, we made a dish from the book 'French Home Cooking', which is a very special book.  It was given by my grandmother to my mother, I think when she got married (the book was published in 1962 which was the year when Mum and Dad got married).  It might even have been a wedding present?  Anyway, it is inscribed as follows:

Now, my grandmother was no fool (she was one of the first women to attend Oxford University, reading PPE at St Hugh's in the 30s).  'Inspiration' is a good word to describe what this book has to offer.  Take the following 'recipe' for Saumon Grillé (Grilled Salmon): "Grill salmon and serve, hot, with a cucumber sauce".  That's it.  No instructions as to how to grill salmon or how to make a cucumber sauce.  No indication of how long the dish takes to prepare.  No pictures, no anecdotes.  No funny stories about that time the author had to prepare a cucumber sauce but there were no cucumbers in all of Paris, or that time when she accidentally served the dish cold instead of hot, with hilarious results.

Anyway, we finally settled on the 'recipe' for Escalopes de Veau à la Viennoise (Schnitzel, to you and me):

It's the one in the middle on the left.  The instructions read: 'Prepare escalopes in the Viennese way.  Serve hot.'

First up, prepare breadcrumbs.  Line up alongside flour and egg:

 Then unwrap the veal:

 Dunk scallops in the order flour, egg, breadcrumbs:

 Then fry:

"Fry until ready"

Here they are in all their glory:

 We served them with roast potatoes and stir-fried red cabbage, with a lemon quarter:

My theory is that in the 60s, the household cooks (invariably women, then, I suppose) actually knew how to cook.  There were no ready-meals in the supermarkets and no microwaves.  So you could write a recipe book with the barest of instructions; people bought the book for tips on whether the dish was served hot or cold, or whether it had a cucumber sauce or not.  If this is right, then since I managed to fry these escalopes OK, that means that I am currently at the level of the average 60s housewife in terms of cooking ability.  I'm quite proud of that!