Home › The Principles of Cookery › Lamb Cutlets
Lamb Cutlets
Take the best end of a well-hung neck of lamb. Saw it off two or three inches from the top of the bones, leaving the cutlets about four inches long. Scrape off the meat from the end of the bone, so as to leave an inch quite bare. Chop off the thick part of the chinebone, and pare away the flat bones which adhere to the meat and spoil the shape. Flatten the cutlets with a cutlet bat. A butcher will always shape the cutlets if requested to do so. They may be either broiled plainly or egged, bread-crumbed, and fried. Green peas, asparagus, spinach, and mashed potatoes are all favourite accompaniments of lamb cutlets, and an infinite variety of sauces may be served with them. The sauce frequently gives its name to the dish, as Cutlets a la Poulette, Cutlets a la Robert, which names simply mean cutlets served with Robert or Poulette sauce. There is no occasion for any waste in shaping cutlets, as the bones can be stewed down for gravy and the fat melted for frying.
This is a butchery-and-method note rather than a measured recipe: it tells you how to cut and trim a rack of lamb into cutlets and leaves the cooking to your judgement. The single most useful line is the one about the butcher — ask for a French-trimmed rack and the work is done.
- Best end of neckIn British butchery this is the rib section behind the shoulder — what a modern counter sells as a rack of lamb. Cut between each bone and you have the cutlets described here, commonly six or seven to a rack.
- Well-hungMeans aged on the carcass, not fresh-killed. Supermarket lamb is aged only briefly; a butcher's lamb hung a week or two is generally reckoned to have deeper flavour and firmer texture, which is what this instruction is after.
- Chine and flat bonesThe chinebone is the spine section along the base of the rack; the flat bones are the tips of the shoulder blade and the feather bones. A butcher removes both with a saw and a boning knife in seconds. Scraping the last inch of rib clean is what is now called French trimming.
- Cutlet batA flat, heavy metal or wooden bat, usually dampened before use. A meat mallet's smooth face or the flat of a heavy knife does the same job. Flatten to about half an inch — enough to even the thickness, not enough to break the fibres.
- Broiled plainlyIn a British book of this date "broiled" means over direct heat — a grill bar or a ridged pan — not under an overhead element. Two to three minutes a side over high heat gives pink cutlets; lamb served at 130–135F internal is the modern target for medium rare.
- Egged and breadcrumbedBeaten egg, then fine dry crumbs (modern practice often flours first, though the entry does not say so), fried in shallow fat at around 350–360F. Cutlets crumbed this way need slightly longer than plain broiled ones, so keep the fat below smoking and turn once.
- Rendering the trimmingsThe advice to melt the fat for frying still works: chop the trimmed fat, melt it slowly in a low oven or a heavy pan, and strain. The bones and scraps make a small, very good stock for the accompanying sauce.
- YieldAllow three cutlets a person as a main course, two if they are thick or part of a longer meal. A single rack therefore serves two to three.
Cutlets cut from the best end and trimmed to show a bare bone are associated with nineteenth-century restaurant practice, borrowed from French cookery, where the scraped bone gave the diner something to hold and the kitchen something to dress with a paper frill. The naming habit the entry describes — à la poulette, à la Robert — is the shorthand of the classical sauce repertoire: given a settled stock of standard sauces, a plain grilled cutlet could be turned into dozens of menu items without changing the meat at all. The closing remark about stewing the bones and melting the fat reflects a household economy in which little left the kitchen unused, and in which a butcher was a frequent contact who would shape a rack on request.