Karađorđeva Šnicla: A Very Long Plan B

Below the fortress, vines shaded the terrace and red-and-white cloths covered the tables. A singer accompanied himself at a keyboard. My introduction to Serbian cooking came with live music.

Inside the schnitzel

I usually pictured a schnitzel lying flat. This one had been rolled up, and the first cut revealed what was keeping it that way.

Inside the breadcrumb coating, pork was wrapped around kajmak and bacon. Kajmak is a rich dairy spread similar to clotted cream, with a little saltiness. Here it filled the centre of the roll, soft and creamy against the meat.

The pork was also the packaging.

A change of plan

In the 1950s, at the Golf restaurant in Belgrade, a regular named Tamara Broz ordered her favourite chicken Kiev. She was a Radio Belgrade announcer who had married into the family of Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavia’s president. The chef, Milovan Mića Stojanović, did not have the ingredients he needed.

He used veal and kajmak in place of chicken and butter, rolled the meat around the filling, breaded it and fried it. The guest liked the result.

The new dish acquired a name to match its ambitions: Karađorđeva šnicla, after Karađorđe, the leader of the First Serbian Uprising in 1804.

According to his son, the schnitzel stood for a Serbian soldier, the tartar sauce for his sash and a decorated lemon for the Order of the Star of Karađorđe. On my plate, the sash came in a small bowl and the medal as a wedge.

Less formally, it is also known as devojački san, “a maiden’s dream”. The usual explanation has to do with its shape, and this article will leave it at that.

Stojanović would go on to cook for Tito himself. His improvised cutlet became a fixture of Serbian restaurant menus, and the improvising did not stop there. Pork became another common choice, and the version I ate had bacon in with the kajmak.