Mutton Chops
Have them trimmed well from all fat and skin; dip each one into beaten egg, and then in rolled cracker; fry in hot fat-and they are even better if baked slowly in the oven. Serve with sliced lemon.
A breaded chop, given two cooking methods and almost no numbers. The choices that matter are the crumb, the fat temperature, and knowing when to stop.
- Mutton for lambMutton is sheep over a year old, strongly flavored and firmer than lamb; American butchers rarely carry it now. Shoulder or rib lamb chops behave the same way in this recipe, and halal or Caribbean butchers are the likeliest source for true mutton.
- Rolled crackerSoda or water crackers crushed fine with a rolling pin. The crumb is coarser and shorter than fine modern dry breadcrumbs, so it browns readily; saltines (unsalted-top if you can find them) crushed to coarse sand are the nearest match, and the cracker's own salt should be allowed for in seasoning.
- Trimming the fatThe direction to trim well from all fat and skin is not idle fussiness: sheep fat carries most of the flavour that period cooks and diners found strong. The egg-and-crumb coating also gives the leaned-down chop a protective crust, though the recipe does not explain itself.
- Hot fatShallow-fry in about a quarter inch of fat at 350-375F. Below that the cracker crumb absorbs grease and slumps; much above it and the coating colors before the chop is through.
- Baked slowlyThe recipe calls this the better method. A slow oven of roughly 300-325F, 25-35 minutes for a thick chop, is a reasonable modern reading, though the book gives no figures. Baked from raw the crumb will stay pale.
- DonenessPull rib or loin chops at 130-135F for pink; mutton shoulder is tougher and takes better to the slow oven, going to 145F or a little past. Lamb and mutton dry out quickly beyond that, coating or no coating.
- The lemonSliced lemon was the conventional accompaniment to fried and breaded meats, and the acid does cut the fat and the muttony note; squeezing it over at the table is the obvious use, though the recipe only says to serve it alongside.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. Two rib chops or one thick loin chop per person is a workable modern portion.
Mutton was a staple of American and British tables through the nineteenth century and had begun a long retreat by the time this book appeared: a growing preference for young lamb pushed it toward the margins, and it eventually became a rarity at U.S. butcher counters. The recipe's insistence on trimming away every scrap of fat reflects that turning taste, since it is the fat that carries mutton's characteristic flavor. Breading a chop in egg and cracker crumb seems to have been a common genteel treatment in this period, applied indifferently to veal, mutton and fish, and the sliced lemon alongside may follow the older European habit of serving acid with rich meat rather than a sauce.