What is an escalope?

Many people seem to think that an escalope is a thin piece of meat coated with breadcrumbs, and certainly that’s a very common method of preparation. However, I doubted that an escalope really did have to be breadcrumbed before it became an escalope, so I did some digging around. Sure enough, there are websites which “define” escalopes as the breadcrumbed presentation. Hey! It must be true, I read it on the Internet.

Hmmm. I decided to get my info from a better source and looked up my old copy of Larousse. Here it is from the master himself:

Escalope

A thin slice of white meat… flattened before being lightly fried or sauteed.

 

 

The classic method of preparing escalopes is to coat them with breadcrumbs (a la milanaise or a la viennoise).

An escalope can also be a slice cut from a large fish (particularly salmon) or from lobster flesh.

So there you have it. It’s perfectly possible to have an escalope without a breadcrumb in sight. Perhaps you’ve learned something today. And it must be true because you read it on Not Delia. 🙂