As a small city with a population of under a hundred thousand, Mechelen's market was nowhere near as large as Les Halles. Perhaps because there were fewer people, it also looked much cleaner; at the very least, the ground was not especially filthy.
There were fresh fruits and vegetables in the morning, but by afternoon, all that remained were the leaves others had picked over. There were still quite a few sea fish at the fish stalls, as well as some pork. "Viennese schnitzel" did not necessarily have to be chicken; other foods could be fried the same way. Chicken was simply relatively tender and did not need to be pounded with a mallet like beef or pork. After tenderizing the cutlet, it had to be coated in egg wash, flour, and breadcrumbs, usually served with a sweet-and-sour sauce such as ketchup. Pork was expensive in the Low Countries, while beef, costly in France, was cheap here. Beef cattle raised in Denmark were fattened, slaughtered, and processed in the Netherlands, and once they flooded the market, they became far cheaper than pigs raised free-range in Belgium's forests.
There were also Vienna wraps, which could be filled with anything. Georgiana chose minced meat and cheese. Mechelen had plenty of dairy products shipped in from the Netherlands. When she bought the cheese, a local auntie told her that cheese could be used to make flatbread, then soaked in beef broth. The Austrians had often eaten it that way in the past.
It was actually a Georgian dish, somewhat like lamb soup with flatbread. But with lamb soup and flatbread, the bread was torn into pieces and soaked in lamb broth, and the bread itself had no flavor. At the auntie's enthusiastic recommendation, Georgiana bought some more cheese. Then a peddler arrived carrying