A mixture of cooked meat, chopped fine, and bound together with potatoes, breadcrumb and egg, or other binding material spiced and reheated. Usually shaped round or oval, and rolled in breadcrumb before cooking. Certain shapes, formed like rib chops, and with a piece of macaroni in each to represent the bone are designated cutlets; thus chicken cutlets, fish cutlets, &c.
[ I couldn't make this up if I tried.]
From The Baker’s ABC by John Kirkland, formerly Head Teacher of National School of Baking, published 1927 by Gresham
I wonder if the macaroni was cooked or raw? Strange the things they did in the ’20s!
Probably uncooked, if meant to be an inedible bone. 1920′s food was styled as representational art, now it’s abstract.