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Mutton Cutlets Braised
Prepare the cutlets, having them an inch thick; insert five pieces of fat bacon through the lean of each cutlet; trim off the ends and cover the bottom of a stewpan with slices of fat bacon, and lay the cutlets, say ten or a dozen, on top of bacon; cover them with stock; to this add an onion, a few cloves, and a bunch of parsley; cover them and let them simmer over a slow fire for two hours; when found to be tender, put upon an oval dish with a little of their stock. Lay a dish upon top of this, with eight-pound weight; when cold, trim them nicely, warm them with their stock, dress with mashed potatoes, and serve with onion sauce.
A two-stage braise: the cutlets are cooked slowly, pressed flat under weight until cold, then trimmed and reheated. The pressing is the point of the recipe, not an afterthought, and it means this is a dish to start a day ahead.
- What a cutlet is hereMutton cutlets means loin or rib chops cut a full inch thick, chine bone removed. Mutton itself is scarce in most markets; lamb shoulder or loin chops work, but lamb is tender far sooner, so check at 60 to 75 minutes rather than two hours.
- Larding"Insert five pieces of fat bacon through the lean" is larding, done with a larding needle: strips of fat salt pork or fatty bacon threaded through the muscle so they baste it from inside. Without a larding needle, cut a deep pocket with a thin boning knife and push the strips in.
- Slow fireA bare tremble, around 180 to 190F, not a boil. The recipe directs a stovetop slow fire; if it is easier, a low covered oven of about 300F will hold roughly the same heat with less attention. A rolling simmer will squeeze the chops dry and cloud the stock.
- StewpanA heavy, straight-sided pan with a tight lid; a Dutch oven is the modern equivalent. Line the bottom with the bacon slices as directed, and use only enough stock to cover, so it concentrates rather than needing reduction later.
- The pressingEight pounds is roughly a large cast-iron skillet or a few tinned goods on a plate. Press the cutlets in a shallow dish with a little of their liquid, and cool them in the refrigerator rather than on the counter, since a covered pan of meat and stock takes hours to come down through the range where bacteria multiply.
- ReheatingLift the set fat off the chilled stock first, then warm the trimmed cutlets gently in the degreased liquid. Reheating them in fat-heavy stock makes them greasy on the plate.
- Onion sauceThe period sauce is a white sauce: onions simmered in milk until soft, then bound with a butter-and-flour roux and seasoned with salt, pepper and a little nutmeg. Sieved, it comes close to a soubise.
- YieldTen or a dozen cutlets serve five or six with the mashed potatoes, allowing two apiece.
Braised and pressed cutlets belong to the Anglo-French repertoire that English and American cookbooks absorbed through the nineteenth century; larding lean meat with strips of pork fat and cooking it slowly on a bed of bacon follows French braising practice. Mutton, generally meaning sheep past its first year or two, was a common roasting and stewing meat in Victorian households and is stronger and tougher than the lamb that largely displaced it in the twentieth century, which is consistent with the two-hour braise here. The pressing under weight is as much thrift as refinement: it firms the meat so it can be trimmed to neat, uniform shapes and reheated later, letting a cook prepare a company dish the day before and finish it in minutes with mashed potatoes and a white onion sauce.