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Mutton Cutlets
Slit 1 pound chestnuts, place in hot oven to loosen skins, shell and take off inner skin. Place in saucepan with gravy to cover and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Boil until tender, then drain and rub through sieve. Chop fine 2 slices ham, add 2 tablespoons Crisco with 1/4 pound chestnut puree, season with salt, pepper and red pepper. Add 1 egg yolk and mix. Trim 8 cutlets, make 1/4 cup Crisco hot in frying pan, cook cutlets 1 minute on right side only, then arrange them flat on dish, cover with another with weight on top, leave until cold. Spread puree over cooked side of cutlets, brush with beaten egg and cover with breadcrumbs. Fry on both sides, and place in oven 5 minutes. Dish in circle on mashed potatoes; fill center with fried potato balls and sprinkle with chopped parsley. Serve with gravy.
A Crisco-era company cookbook recipe: mutton cutlets sealed on one side, pressed flat, masked with chestnut and ham puree, then breaded and fried. The order of operations is the whole trick.
- The hinge: sear one side onlyThe cutlets are cooked about a minute on one face only, then arranged flat, covered and weighted, and left until completely cold. The recipe insists on cold and flat before the puree goes on; allow enough chilling time for that.
- Mutton, and what to buy insteadMutton means sheep over a year old, strongly flavoured and firm; it is rare outside halal and specialty butchers. Eight lamb rib or loin chops, trimmed and pounded to an even 1/2 inch, behave the same way and cook faster.
- CriscoThis book was published to promote Crisco, so shortening appears everywhere. The 2 tablespoons in the puree are there as a binder and can be butter; the 1/4 cup for frying can be any neutral oil or clarified butter.
- ChestnutsA pound of fresh in-shell chestnuts yields well over the 1/4 pound of puree called for, so expect leftovers, or buy vacuum-packed peeled chestnuts and simmer about 115 g of them in stock. Slitting before heating lets the shell open so both skins can be worked off; peel while still hot, as the inner skin clings once the nuts cool.
- "Gravy to cover"In this period gravy means meat stock or the pan juices from a roast, not a thickened sauce. Use good brown stock, and keep some back for serving.
- Red pepperCayenne. Season the puree assertively, as it has to carry against the mutton.
- Oven temperaturesThe book gives no figures: 'hot oven' for loosening the chestnut skins would conventionally be read as roughly 400-450F, and no temperature at all is specified for the five-minute finish, which is only to heat the puree through rather than to cook the meat further.
- Yield and serviceEight cutlets would reasonably serve four. The cutlets are dished in a ring on the mashed potato, the center filled with small fried potato balls and chopped parsley, with gravy served alongside.
This comes from one of the recipe books issued by Procter & Gamble in the 1910s to teach American cooks what to do with Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening it had introduced in 1911; Crisco simply stands where butter, lard or suet would have stood. The dish is French in method rather than English: cutlets sealed on one side, pressed cold, masked with a stiff forcemeat or puree, then crumbed and fried is the technique behind côtelettes à la Maintenon and its relatives. Chestnut puree with mutton and a ham garnish is a winter pairing, and the fact that mutton is assumed here rather than explained is itself a marker of the period, before the American market moved decisively to young lamb.