The Perfect Saltimbocca
Created | Updated Jan 27, 2008
In case anybody's interested in knowing the details....
The Italian word “saltimbocca” would have been an inspired name for any recipe. It’s a contraction of “salta in bocca,” meaning “[it] jumps into the mouth,” and the whole concept is mouthwatering. So no surprise, the name is sometimes borrowed for dishes that are, well, not like the original.
In Rome — the recipe’s official home town — saltimbocca is a veal dish: A scallop of veal is pounded thin and topped with a fresh sage leaf or two, plus a slice of prosciutto ham. This sandwich is sewed together with toothpicks and then pan-fried in butter. That’s Saltimbocca alla Romana. It’s brilliantly simple. And because you can cook it in less than ten minutes, it’s often included in I’m-a-Real-Busy-Person cookbooks.
But veal is only the beginning. In kitchens and restaurants all around the world, the recipe is still evolving. In America the most widespread variation is chicken saltimbocca: thinly-sliced chicken breasts cooked with prosciutto and sage. You can also find it made with turkey, pork, lamb, beef, rabbit or venison. The name has also been attached to zucchini (a California version, where else) and wallaby (Australia, where else). Then there is monkfish (California again), trout, salmon, abalone, eggplant, and portabello mushroom saltimbocca. Personally, I think I would draw the line somewhere around calf’s liver saltimbocca or sea-cucumber saltimbocca.
No matter what ingredient you use for the foundation, in theory it’s the addition of sage and prosciutto that makes your dish qualify for the name saltimbocca. Without them, it’s bogus. But wait a minute, some folks use basil instead of sage. And some people (you know who you are) use peppery capocolla ham instead of prosciutto, and one restaurant I know of uses salami. Tsk, tsk.
The evolution also includes some really weird mutations. For example, a runner-up in a Campbell Soup Company recipe competition featured Orange Dijon Chicken Saltimbocca, sauced with Campbell condensed soup. But that’s another story.
Let’s talk about that sauce. Most folks sauté their saltimbocca in butter. But a minority of cooks (Mario Battali, for one) prefer olive oil or a butter/olive oil combination. Fine — either way, that and the meat create some pan juice, which makes the simplest sauce.
But it’s almost Standard Operating Procedure to add wine. In the Old Days they added Marsala wine, but that gives you Veal Marsala minus its mandatory mushrooms. Just say No. Then, some folks used dry Marsala and some used sweet. Better is a dry white wine, say a Pinot Grigio or a sauvignon blanc, or a jug of Gallo chardonnay. You get the picture — the wine in the sauce gives you some acid which you do want, and the alcohol which you don’t want evaporates from the sauce.
Obviously you can get the alcohol that you do want for guzzling from most any other nearby bottle.
Another thing: Many folks top off the veal/prosciutto sandwich with a slice of melted cheese (you know who you are). Some folks add mozzerella, or fontina, or provolone, or cheddar, for Pete’s sake. I say when you add cheese you have Veal Cordon Bleu, not Saltimbocca. Fogeddaboudit.
When it comes to the many other variations on the contents of the sandwich, don’t get me started. Some people add sliced tomatoes. The saltimbocca of today has an identity crisis. Some folks should see a shrink.
So what exactly is the real, authentic, genuine, definitive, perfect version of saltimbocca? Well, what do the experts say? One of the earliest published recipes dates back to 1891. It’s from Pellegrino Artusi’s "Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well," which has been called "the most important book ever written on Italian cuisine." And it’s a surprising version because the sandwiches are bite-size. Not those whopping big slabs of veal we call "cutlets" in America. Sr. Artusi recommended cutting the veal into one-ounce pieces, which means roughly 2 inches square. In fact some people believe the size of these morsels helped inspire the name: They were small enough to leap into your mouth on their own initiative. There were no culinary pretensions involved in that early version — ordinary cooks used the small scraps of meat because they were cheapest.
The late, great Elizabeth David, whose classic book "Italian Food" was published in 1954, preferred to use larger slices of veal, pounded until paper-thin, then rolled up with the sage and ham. We’ve seen that done in other countries, minus the sage and prosciutto, and the rolls are often called "veal birds." There’s nothing wrong with that, but it ain’t saltimbocca.
Still another variation comes from Ada Boni’s "The Talisman Italian Cookbook," or Il Talismano, a standard reference work that the publisher claims "is to Italians what Joy of Cooking is to Americans." Ada Boni takes us back to the flat sandwich version, using cutlets that are about 5 inches square (about 4 ounces each).
The real point is this: You should feel free to make your saltimbocca the Ada Boni way; or rolled up à la Elizabeth David; or in the bite-size morsels that Pellegrino Artusi knew and loved. They are all based on the chef’s whim (a/k/a “chop suey” in Cantonese). They can all be found at good restaurants in Rome or in Boston’s Italian district, the North End, or at out-of-the-way spots in Philly or NYC. And any one of these versions can be called authentic. That’s not the problem with achieving a great saltimbocca. The problem is, the devil really is in the details.
Devil’s First detail: About those "breaded veal cutlet" versions, the ones that some restaurants, some chefs, and some cookbook authors like to coat with a soggy mass of flour or worse, dough. Again, just don’t do it. Neither Pellegrino Artusi nor Elizabeth David nor Ada Boni used any form of flour. It’s not only more work, it’s virtually impossible to achieve the proper crispy browned texture without using gallons of oil.
Devil’s Second detail: About that sage. Many recipes call for one whole fresh sage leaf in between the veal and prosciutto slices. Artusi, using those bite-size "cutlets," called for half a sage leaf because a whole leaf was too much. Either way, when you bite into that leaf it will overwhelm your nostrils with essence of sage. Not altogether pleasant. Sage was used in large quantities by the Egyptians for embalming, which is not our purpose here. Ada Boni’s solution is way far the best: Chop up the sage leaves and sprinkle a pinch or two evenly over each slice of veal. Use a light touch. Sage has the ideal fragrance, but a little goes a long way. We are not making mummies here.
Devil’s Third detail: cheese? We already decided that was a different dish. However to give credit where credit is due, my Italian friend Dick’s aunt in Florence (not Rome) does use cheese in her particular saltimbocca, though she uses Velveeta — no kidding — instead of the traditional Fontina. Easy answer: don’t use no cheese. It’s just too gooey (or if you really must, use genuine imported Italian Fontina, not the domestic imitations). But even the best Fontina is better off melted into your polenta than in your saltimbocca (and those two dishes are a superb pair).
Devil’s Fourth detail: the sauce. The question of flour pops up again. There are some very good chefs who do like to dust the veal very lightly with flour, then shake the flour off before cooking. Mario Batalli of The Food Network belongs to that school. The good news is, that will help your sauce thicken. The bad news is, it can ruin the texture of the dish. Dust if you must, but the perfect saltimbocca has a light, slightly reduced sauce, not gravy. No flour. And, no cream.
Devil’s Fifth detail: variations on cooking methods. In the best restaurants it can be sublime. In the worst it can be a gooey mess — made with tough cuts of veal that are heavily breaded and soggy, the ham reduced to small squares distributed in an unidentifiable gravy, the whole thing covered with melted fontinella or fontina that comes from Denmark or the U.S.
After reviewing the best-est cookbooks, after visits to restaurants far and wide, after endless hours searching the Web, we turned to an old friend to round out our research. He is an Italian-American who taught Italian literature at the University of Massachusetts for many years. He has an extended family of aunts and cousins who all have their individual versions of the dish. He phoned his Aunt in Rome, his cousin in Tuscany, his other aunt in Florence, and his friends in Sienna. He surveyed Italian faculty wives in Amherst, Massachusetts. Then, in our own kitchen, my wife and I tested every variation at least once. The version that we ended up with is one of the simplest; and after trying it dozens of times with friends as guinea pigs, we decided it was just right. So finally, the recipe:
PERFECT SALTIMBOCCA
The ingredients begin with high-quality VEAL CUTLETS (a/k/a scallopine). Note that in some American towns, people who want to purchase veal are treated like criminals. So I recommend that you ask for veal that has been treated kindly during its lifetime. You need only about 6 ounces of veal cutlets per serving. But fair warning: guests tend to go back craving for seconds.
Next you need PROSCIUTTO. Prosciutto is salt-cured, uncooked ham, and the best is imported from Parma. The worst is made in America. It is sliced paper-thin when you buy it, and you may need 2 paper-thin slices to cover each veal cutlet.
Fresh SAGE: snip off the leaves and mince them into small fragments. Finally, some UNSALTED BUTTER and about 1 cup (8 ounces) of DRY WHITE WINE complete the list.
Before you begin, warm a couple of sturdy plates in a 200-degree oven and leave them there.
Now, pound the veal until it is very thin. Best method is to place each cutlet between sheets of plastic-wrap and beat the heck out of them with a wooden mallet. If you don’t have a wooden mallet, use any blunt instrument. The bottom of an empty wine bottle works fine.
Sprinkle a pinch of minced sage over each cutlet, distributing it evenly.
On top of the sage, drape a slice of prosciutto to cover the cutlet. If you’ve pounded it a whole lot, it may require more than one slice of prosciutto to completely cover it. But keep it to a single layer.
Now press the prosciutto firmly in place. I find that it’s not necessary to hold them together with toothpicks. In a large skillet, melt a tablespoon of butter and place the saltimbocca veal-side down. Keep the heat medium-high. Brown the cutlets for 2 minutes, then flip over and cook the prosciutto side for another minute. Remove from skillet and let them rest on the warm plates in the warm oven.
Next, crank up the heat under the skillet to high and pour a cup of dry white wine over the pan juices (sure, sweet or dry Marsala is okay—but veal Marsala should really be a different dish and as mentiond above, it calls for mushrooms). Reduce the wine to about half a cup. Check the warm plates in the oven for additional veal juice, and pour any that you find there into the sauce. Finally, turn off the heat and whisk in a couple of pats of butter (let your conscience be your guide). When the butter is incorporated into the sauce, it’s ready to drizzle over the saltimbocca servings and eat. This ain’t no thick gravy — it’s a nice thin sauce.
Pasta is fine as an accompaniment, but mashed potatoes are also an accepted tradition. Or like I said, polenta.
How will you know when your saltimbocca is perfect? When it drives your tongue crazy, it’s perfect. If it jumps into your mouth on its own initiative, so much the better.
Enjoy.
The Italian word “saltimbocca” would have been an inspired name for any recipe. It’s a contraction of “salta in bocca,” meaning “[it] jumps into the mouth,” and the whole concept is mouthwatering. So no surprise, the name is sometimes borrowed for dishes that are, well, not like the original.
In Rome — the recipe’s official home town — saltimbocca is a veal dish: A scallop of veal is pounded thin and topped with a fresh sage leaf or two, plus a slice of prosciutto ham. This sandwich is sewed together with toothpicks and then pan-fried in butter. That’s Saltimbocca alla Romana. It’s brilliantly simple. And because you can cook it in less than ten minutes, it’s often included in I’m-a-Real-Busy-Person cookbooks.
But veal is only the beginning. In kitchens and restaurants all around the world, the recipe is still evolving. In America the most widespread variation is chicken saltimbocca: thinly-sliced chicken breasts cooked with prosciutto and sage. You can also find it made with turkey, pork, lamb, beef, rabbit or venison. The name has also been attached to zucchini (a California version, where else) and wallaby (Australia, where else). Then there is monkfish (California again), trout, salmon, abalone, eggplant, and portabello mushroom saltimbocca. Personally, I think I would draw the line somewhere around calf’s liver saltimbocca or sea-cucumber saltimbocca.
No matter what ingredient you use for the foundation, in theory it’s the addition of sage and prosciutto that makes your dish qualify for the name saltimbocca. Without them, it’s bogus. But wait a minute, some folks use basil instead of sage. And some people (you know who you are) use peppery capocolla ham instead of prosciutto, and one restaurant I know of uses salami. Tsk, tsk.
The evolution also includes some really weird mutations. For example, a runner-up in a Campbell Soup Company recipe competition featured Orange Dijon Chicken Saltimbocca, sauced with Campbell condensed soup. But that’s another story.
Let’s talk about that sauce. Most folks sauté their saltimbocca in butter. But a minority of cooks (Mario Battali, for one) prefer olive oil or a butter/olive oil combination. Fine — either way, that and the meat create some pan juice, which makes the simplest sauce.
But it’s almost Standard Operating Procedure to add wine. In the Old Days they added Marsala wine, but that gives you Veal Marsala minus its mandatory mushrooms. Just say No. Then, some folks used dry Marsala and some used sweet. Better is a dry white wine, say a Pinot Grigio or a sauvignon blanc, or a jug of Gallo chardonnay. You get the picture — the wine in the sauce gives you some acid which you do want, and the alcohol which you don’t want evaporates from the sauce.
Obviously you can get the alcohol that you do want for guzzling from most any other nearby bottle.
Another thing: Many folks top off the veal/prosciutto sandwich with a slice of melted cheese (you know who you are). Some folks add mozzerella, or fontina, or provolone, or cheddar, for Pete’s sake. I say when you add cheese you have Veal Cordon Bleu, not Saltimbocca. Fogeddaboudit.
When it comes to the many other variations on the contents of the sandwich, don’t get me started. Some people add sliced tomatoes. The saltimbocca of today has an identity crisis. Some folks should see a shrink.
So what exactly is the real, authentic, genuine, definitive, perfect version of saltimbocca? Well, what do the experts say? One of the earliest published recipes dates back to 1891. It’s from Pellegrino Artusi’s "Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well," which has been called "the most important book ever written on Italian cuisine." And it’s a surprising version because the sandwiches are bite-size. Not those whopping big slabs of veal we call "cutlets" in America. Sr. Artusi recommended cutting the veal into one-ounce pieces, which means roughly 2 inches square. In fact some people believe the size of these morsels helped inspire the name: They were small enough to leap into your mouth on their own initiative. There were no culinary pretensions involved in that early version — ordinary cooks used the small scraps of meat because they were cheapest.
The late, great Elizabeth David, whose classic book "Italian Food" was published in 1954, preferred to use larger slices of veal, pounded until paper-thin, then rolled up with the sage and ham. We’ve seen that done in other countries, minus the sage and prosciutto, and the rolls are often called "veal birds." There’s nothing wrong with that, but it ain’t saltimbocca.
Still another variation comes from Ada Boni’s "The Talisman Italian Cookbook," or Il Talismano, a standard reference work that the publisher claims "is to Italians what Joy of Cooking is to Americans." Ada Boni takes us back to the flat sandwich version, using cutlets that are about 5 inches square (about 4 ounces each).
The real point is this: You should feel free to make your saltimbocca the Ada Boni way; or rolled up à la Elizabeth David; or in the bite-size morsels that Pellegrino Artusi knew and loved. They are all based on the chef’s whim (a/k/a “chop suey” in Cantonese). They can all be found at good restaurants in Rome or in Boston’s Italian district, the North End, or at out-of-the-way spots in Philly or NYC. And any one of these versions can be called authentic. That’s not the problem with achieving a great saltimbocca. The problem is, the devil really is in the details.
Devil’s First detail: About those "breaded veal cutlet" versions, the ones that some restaurants, some chefs, and some cookbook authors like to coat with a soggy mass of flour or worse, dough. Again, just don’t do it. Neither Pellegrino Artusi nor Elizabeth David nor Ada Boni used any form of flour. It’s not only more work, it’s virtually impossible to achieve the proper crispy browned texture without using gallons of oil.
Devil’s Second detail: About that sage. Many recipes call for one whole fresh sage leaf in between the veal and prosciutto slices. Artusi, using those bite-size "cutlets," called for half a sage leaf because a whole leaf was too much. Either way, when you bite into that leaf it will overwhelm your nostrils with essence of sage. Not altogether pleasant. Sage was used in large quantities by the Egyptians for embalming, which is not our purpose here. Ada Boni’s solution is way far the best: Chop up the sage leaves and sprinkle a pinch or two evenly over each slice of veal. Use a light touch. Sage has the ideal fragrance, but a little goes a long way. We are not making mummies here.
Devil’s Third detail: cheese? We already decided that was a different dish. However to give credit where credit is due, my Italian friend Dick’s aunt in Florence (not Rome) does use cheese in her particular saltimbocca, though she uses Velveeta — no kidding — instead of the traditional Fontina. Easy answer: don’t use no cheese. It’s just too gooey (or if you really must, use genuine imported Italian Fontina, not the domestic imitations). But even the best Fontina is better off melted into your polenta than in your saltimbocca (and those two dishes are a superb pair).
Devil’s Fourth detail: the sauce. The question of flour pops up again. There are some very good chefs who do like to dust the veal very lightly with flour, then shake the flour off before cooking. Mario Batalli of The Food Network belongs to that school. The good news is, that will help your sauce thicken. The bad news is, it can ruin the texture of the dish. Dust if you must, but the perfect saltimbocca has a light, slightly reduced sauce, not gravy. No flour. And, no cream.
Devil’s Fifth detail: variations on cooking methods. In the best restaurants it can be sublime. In the worst it can be a gooey mess — made with tough cuts of veal that are heavily breaded and soggy, the ham reduced to small squares distributed in an unidentifiable gravy, the whole thing covered with melted fontinella or fontina that comes from Denmark or the U.S.
After reviewing the best-est cookbooks, after visits to restaurants far and wide, after endless hours searching the Web, we turned to an old friend to round out our research. He is an Italian-American who taught Italian literature at the University of Massachusetts for many years. He has an extended family of aunts and cousins who all have their individual versions of the dish. He phoned his Aunt in Rome, his cousin in Tuscany, his other aunt in Florence, and his friends in Sienna. He surveyed Italian faculty wives in Amherst, Massachusetts. Then, in our own kitchen, my wife and I tested every variation at least once. The version that we ended up with is one of the simplest; and after trying it dozens of times with friends as guinea pigs, we decided it was just right. So finally, the recipe:
PERFECT SALTIMBOCCA
The ingredients begin with high-quality VEAL CUTLETS (a/k/a scallopine). Note that in some American towns, people who want to purchase veal are treated like criminals. So I recommend that you ask for veal that has been treated kindly during its lifetime. You need only about 6 ounces of veal cutlets per serving. But fair warning: guests tend to go back craving for seconds.
Next you need PROSCIUTTO. Prosciutto is salt-cured, uncooked ham, and the best is imported from Parma. The worst is made in America. It is sliced paper-thin when you buy it, and you may need 2 paper-thin slices to cover each veal cutlet.
Fresh SAGE: snip off the leaves and mince them into small fragments. Finally, some UNSALTED BUTTER and about 1 cup (8 ounces) of DRY WHITE WINE complete the list.
Before you begin, warm a couple of sturdy plates in a 200-degree oven and leave them there.
Now, pound the veal until it is very thin. Best method is to place each cutlet between sheets of plastic-wrap and beat the heck out of them with a wooden mallet. If you don’t have a wooden mallet, use any blunt instrument. The bottom of an empty wine bottle works fine.
Sprinkle a pinch of minced sage over each cutlet, distributing it evenly.
On top of the sage, drape a slice of prosciutto to cover the cutlet. If you’ve pounded it a whole lot, it may require more than one slice of prosciutto to completely cover it. But keep it to a single layer.
Now press the prosciutto firmly in place. I find that it’s not necessary to hold them together with toothpicks. In a large skillet, melt a tablespoon of butter and place the saltimbocca veal-side down. Keep the heat medium-high. Brown the cutlets for 2 minutes, then flip over and cook the prosciutto side for another minute. Remove from skillet and let them rest on the warm plates in the warm oven.
Next, crank up the heat under the skillet to high and pour a cup of dry white wine over the pan juices (sure, sweet or dry Marsala is okay—but veal Marsala should really be a different dish and as mentiond above, it calls for mushrooms). Reduce the wine to about half a cup. Check the warm plates in the oven for additional veal juice, and pour any that you find there into the sauce. Finally, turn off the heat and whisk in a couple of pats of butter (let your conscience be your guide). When the butter is incorporated into the sauce, it’s ready to drizzle over the saltimbocca servings and eat. This ain’t no thick gravy — it’s a nice thin sauce.
Pasta is fine as an accompaniment, but mashed potatoes are also an accepted tradition. Or like I said, polenta.
How will you know when your saltimbocca is perfect? When it drives your tongue crazy, it’s perfect. If it jumps into your mouth on its own initiative, so much the better.
Enjoy.
