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Breast of Lamb, with New Potatoes
Trim and prepare them in the same way as the foregoing; bread crumb the cutlets, first dipped in beaten egg, and then in clarified butter; bread crumb them the second time; put them in shape with the blade of a knife, and put in pan with a little clarified butter. When about to send to the table, fry the cutlets of a light color, drain them on a sheet of paper and glaze lightly; dish them up and serve some white sauce under them. They may be served with all kinds of vegetable garnishes.
This is the second half of a two-part entry: "prepare them in the same way as the foregoing" points back to a preceding breast-of-lamb recipe that has been left behind. What survives here is the finishing method, and it only makes sense if you know what came before it.
- What "the foregoing" meansBreast of lamb is a fatty, cartilaginous cut, and the standard treatment is to cook it slowly in liquid first, then press it flat under a weight and chill it before cutting it into the "cutlets" this recipe breads and fries. The preceding recipe is not reproduced here, so the exact method cannot be confirmed, but breading and frying raw breast would give tough, greasy meat.
- The hinge: press it coldThe pressing and thorough chilling is what makes the rest possible. Warm or unpressed braised breast will not hold a clean edge, will not take a coating evenly, and will fall apart in the pan.
- Clarified butter as a breading dipThe cutlets go through beaten egg and clarified butter and are crumbed twice; the wording is ambiguous as to whether the butter comes before or between the two crumb coats. The butter layer is what makes this a double breading rather than a soggy one, and it needs to be liquid but not hot when the cutlets go through it.
- "Put them in shape with the blade of a knife"Press and pat the flat of the blade against the sides of each cutlet to square up the coating into a neat wedge. It is done before frying, and is largely about appearance.
- "Fry of a light color"If the meat has already been cooked through, the pan work is only about the crust. Moderate heat, a few minutes a side, pale gold rather than deep brown; pushing the color further will burn the butter.
- GlazeTo glaze here means to brush with glace de viande, meat stock reduced to a syrup, for shine. A commercial demi-glace concentrate does the same job. The recipe treats it as part of the finishing, not an extra.
- White sauceIn period usage this generally means a flour-and-butter roux with milk or veal stock, seasoned and strained: a b s goes under the cutlets, poured into the dish first, so the crust stays crisp.
- The new potatoesThe title promises them and the text never returns to them. Boil small waxy potatoes in salted water until just tender, roll them in butter and parsley, and set them around the cutlets as one of the "vegetable garnishes" mentioned at the end.
- YieldOne whole breast of lamb, braised and pressed, cuts into roughly six to eight cutlets — three or four servings as a main course.
Breast of lamb was cheap because it is mostly fat, bone and connective tissue, and the braise-press-crumb-fry treatment is the classic professional answer to that problem: long moist cooking to render and soften, then a crisp coating to give a humble cut the shape and presentation of an expensive one. French kitchens called the result épigrammes d'agneau, usually paired on the plate with a true rib chop so the diner got one of each; the name is often traced, by folk tradition, to an eighteenth-century story of a diner who asked for "epigrams" and a cook who did not understand the request. The technique survives in exactly this abbreviated form — a paragraph of finishing directions appended to a braising recipe on the page before.