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Stuffed Lamb Chops
Wipe 6 French chops, cut 1 1/2 inches thick. Split meat in halves, cutting to bone. Cook 2 1/2 tablespoons Crisco and 1 tablespoon chopped onion 5 minutes; remove onion, add 1/2 cup chopped mushroom, and cook 5 minutes; add 2 tablespoons flour, 3 tablespoons stock, 1 teaspoon chopped parsley, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and few grains red pepper. Spread mixture between layers of chops, press together lightly, wrap in Criscoed paper cases, and broil 10 minutes. Serve with chestnut puree.
A stuffed rib chop cooked in a paper case — an early twentieth-century Crisco-book version of en papillote. Two things need attention: the fat, and the fact that paper under a modern broiler will scorch.
- French chopsRib chops with the bone scraped clean of meat and fat, cut a full 1 1/2 inches thick — about 5 to 6 oz each. Ask the butcher to french a rack, or buy thick-cut rib chops and cut the pocket yourself, slicing horizontally in to the bone without going through the far side.
- CriscoHydrogenated vegetable shortening, first sold in 1911 and reformulated since. This book was written to sell it, which is why it appears where an older cookbook would say butter or lamb fat. Butter or a neutral oil does the same work and tastes better with lamb.
- Removing the onionThe onion is cooked only to flavour the fat, then discarded. One likely reason is that finely chopped onion added raw to a thin stuffing would not soften in ten minutes. Keep it if you prefer, chopped fine.
- The stuffing is meant to be stiffTwo tablespoons flour to three tablespoons stock gives a paste, not a sauce. That is the point: it must stay between the two halves of the chop rather than run out. Cook the flour into the mushrooms for a minute before the stock goes in or it will taste raw.
- Red pepperCayenne. A few grains means a pinch, well under 1/8 teaspoon.
- The paper case"Criscoed paper" is parchment or plain paper brushed with fat, folded around each chop. Under a modern overhead broiler at close range the paper will brown hard and can catch. Cook the parcels in a hot oven, around 425F, on a sheet pan instead, or skip the paper and sear the chops in a pan.
- Ten minutes is short for a stuffed 1 1/2-inch chopWith a cold flour-and-mushroom paste in the middle, ten minutes leaves the centre barely warm. Cook to 130-135F at the thickest point for medium-rare lamb, then rest 5 minutes. Expect 15 to 20 minutes in a 425F oven for parcels.
- YieldSix chops, two per person as a main course with the chestnut puree — three servings, or six if the dinner runs to several courses as this book's menus do.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, which came on the market in 1911; the recipes are ordinary period dishes rewritten so that shortening stands in for butter, lard and suet at every turn. The chop itself belongs to the French restaurant repertoire that dominated American formal dining before the First World War — a côtelette stuffed with a mushroom duxelles and cooked en papillote, the paper case trapping steam and scent so the parcel could be opened at the table. Chestnut puree as the accompaniment places it squarely in autumn and winter, when chestnuts were cheap and widely sold by street vendors in American cities.