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Breaded Chops
Wipe and trim mutton chops, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dip in crumbs, egg, then crumbs, and fry in hot Crisco from 5 to 8 minutes, then drain. Do not fry more than 4 chops at a time, and allow the Crisco to reheat between fryings. After testing Crisco for temperature put in the chops, then lower the heat that the surface of the chops may not be burned while the inside is yet under done.
A straightforward pan-fried breaded chop from a Crisco-sponsored menu book. Two things carry it: the breading order and the heat curve.
- The hinge: drop the heat after the chops go inThe instruction to lower the heat once the chops hit the fat is the whole technique. A crumb crust colours in three or four minutes, while a thick chop needs longer than that to cook through, so the fat has to start hot enough to set the coating and then coast.
- Testing the fatThe recipe calls for testing the Crisco but does not say how; period books commonly used a bread-cube test, a cube of bread browning in under a minute indicating fat hot enough for frying. A thermometer does the same job with less guesswork.
- Crumbs, egg, crumbsThe double coating is deliberate and worth keeping. The first dry layer gives the beaten egg something to grip; without it the egg slides off the meat and the crust sheets away in the pan. Beat the egg with a spoonful of water or milk to thin it.
- Crisco and its substitutesCrisco in this book is the sponsor's product, an all-vegetable hydrogenated shortening. Any neutral fat with a high smoke point works the same way; lard or refined oil are the obvious stand-ins.
- Four at a timeThe instruction not to crowd the pan and to let the fat recover is not padding. Cold chops drop the temperature sharply, and fat below about 325F soaks into crumbs rather than sealing them.
- MuttonMutton means sheep over a year old, stronger in flavour and firmer than lamb, and rarely sold in general grocers now. Lamb rib or loin chops about three-quarters of an inch thick behave the same way in the pan.
- Timing and donenessFive to eight minutes total suits a chop under an inch; thicker cuts need finishing in a 350F oven rather than longer in the fat, which only darkens the crust. Lamb is usually taken to 145F and rested.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Figure one to two chops per person; the four-at-a-time figure is a limit on crowding the pan rather than a stated serving size.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre that flourished after 1911, when Procter & Gamble launched Crisco and began commissioning cookbooks in which every fried, creamed and pastried dish called for the new hydrogenated shortening by name. The recipes are conventional Anglo-American cookery of the period; the product placement is the point, which is why the fat is specified three times in three sentences while the chops themselves get no weight or thickness. Breaded chops were standard middle-class fare, and the egg-and-crumb coating was one of the ordinary ways a cook stretched and dignified a cheap cut.