Wiener Schnitzel, Show Thy True Face
Wiener Schnitzel, we love you, and you're not going anywhere. But what have you given birth to? According to the hot shots at Sturgis Journal:
"Besides the war, chicken and turkey were not yet raised in huge numbers so poultry was very high-priced. Veal, on the other hand, while never an American favorite, was cheap and easily had and with a magic blend of seasonings could be made to 'mock' the flavor of that pricey chicken."
"Interestingly, the recipe for city chicken is almost identical to the German recipe for wiener schnitzel. Therefore, it is quite possible this recipe came to us at this particular time in history because it was really a German secret smuggled during the war!"
Nice try, Laura. You're good at writing florid lies for my great-aunt to recount. But just as veal was never as cheap as it was rare, city chicken isn't Wiener Schnitzel. For our German audience: city chicken is an abomination made of pork and veal. It dares to be neither chicken nor sausage, but an unholy, reconstituted conglomeration of the two. Wiener Schnitzel is just veal, and lacking in infernal design. Don't get me wrong, I love it -- after all, Americans love food that's cultivated in the spawning vats of Hell -- but a baby mole could tell you one ain't the other.
Now, as for Chicken-Fried Steak -- let's check out this recipe from What's Cooking America:
"You might be surprised to learn that there is no chicken in Chicken-Fried Steak. It is tenderized round steak (a cheap and tough piece of beef) made like fried chicken with a milk gravy made from the drippings left in the pan... Although not official, the dish is considered the state dish of Texas..."
"The origin of the Chicken-Fried Steak probably comes from the German people who settled in Texas from 1844 to 1850. As Wiener Schnitzel is a popular German dish that is made from veal, and because veal was never popular in Texas and beef was, the German immigrants probably adapted their popular dish to use the tougher cuts of beef available to them."
So Chicken-Fried Steak is a success story of Germans adapting the best they could to inferior culinary conditions on the frontier (hot dogs and beer were to follow), while explaining how Germans won the West (most immigrants on the West Coast can claim some German heritage). What's cooking, indeed!
Comments
You might also be surprised to learn that the entire southern half of the United States insists on calling a similar dish "chicken-fried chicken."
Don't think too hard. It's what it sounds like -- fried chicken. But don't you dare call it that.
America, the blame's all yours on this one.
Manch; February 15, 2006 10:31 PM
And wiener schnitzel is austrian, from vienna! If you're schnitzel is larger than your plate there, you'll get the next one free, now that's american.
Pete; February 16, 2006 12:22 PM