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Lamb Cutlets, Fried, with Peas
Cut and trim the cutlets, egg and bread-crumb them carefully, and fry them in plenty of boiling fat. Turn them on to kitchen paper to drain, and decorate each with a paper frill. Boil some green peas until tender, drain them, add a piece of butter, and pepper and salt, and heap them in the centre of the dish, with the cutlets arranged round. Spinach or asparagus tips may take the place of the peas. Probable cost, 1s. per pound.
A plain late-Victorian dish that depends almost entirely on how the cutlets are trimmed and how hot the fat is. Little translation is needed beyond the frying medium and the vegetable.
- "Boiling fat"This means deep fat at frying heat, not fat at 100C. Around 350-360F (175-180C) browns the crumb before the lamb overcooks; a crumb dropped in should sizzle briskly and colour in under a minute.
- Trimming the cutletsThe recipe leaves this to the cook; the usual period understanding was a rack of lamb divided into single-bone chops, with the bone scraped clean for an inch or so and the tail of fat cut short. Ask for a French-trimmed rack and cut between the bones yourself for even thickness.
- DonenessA crumbed cutlet about 3/4 inch thick needs roughly 3 minutes total in the fat and will come out pink at the centre. Longer frying dries the eye of meat and the crumb starts to darken past the point of pleasure.
- Egg and crumbPeriod crumbs are dried and sieved white breadcrumbs, finer and drier than panko. Flour lightly first, then beaten egg, then crumbs, and press them on firmly so the coating does not slide off in the fat.
- Paper frillsCutlet frills were decorative paper cuffs slipped over the exposed bone, partly for looks and partly so the diner could pick the chop up. They are entirely optional and are sold as "cutlet frills" if you want them.
- The peasBoil fresh peas 3-4 minutes, frozen peas 2, then drain hard and toss with butter. Victorian 'until tender' generally implies longer boiling than modern peas need.
- Cost note"1s. per pound" is a shilling a pound, the book's standard price guide for the housekeeper. It has no bearing on the method.
- YieldAllow two to three cutlets per person, so a single eight-bone rack serves three, with about 1 lb of peas.
Crumbed and fried cutlets served in a ring around a mound of vegetables were a fixture of the English dinner table from the mid-nineteenth century onward, and the arrangement is sometimes described as cutlets en couronne, set upright in a crown with the garnish at the centre. The recipe is really a template rather than a fixed dish, the interchangeable peas, spinach or asparagus tips making the point that the method stays the same and the garnish follows the season. The paper frill belongs to the same logic of service, and is traditionally said to have let a diner lift the bone cleanly. Lamb at a shilling a pound would have been within the reach of a middle-class household with a cook.