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MUTTON CHOPS (a la Soyer)
First select well-fed mutton, but not too fat, and get the chops evenly cut; if not, beat them into shape with the chopper. Not more than one-third of the chop should be fat. Put an ounce of butter or lard into the frying-pan; when it is entirely melted seize the chop at the bone end with a fork, and dip it for half a minute into the fat, then turn on one side, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and, if liked, finely-chopped shallot or onion, and savoury herbs. In three minutes turn, and serve the other side the same; equalise the cooking by frequent turning, but give the chop altogether not more than ten minutes if thick, but less if a thin one. A piece of garlic, if the flavour be approved, may be rubbed across the dish when hot, or it may be rubbed lightly across the chop. Serve with plain or maitre d'hotel butter. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. per pound. Sufficient, one pound for two persons.
A straightforward pan-fried chop, but the method assumes a heavy iron pan over a coal range and a cook who never leaves it. The instructions worth translating are the ones about heat and turning.
- The hinge: frequent turningThe recipe has you turn after three minutes and then "equalise the cooking by frequent turning" rather than leaving the chop undisturbed. Turning often cooks the interior evenly without driving the outside to grey, and modern cooks have argued for the same practice. Resist the urge to leave it alone for a proper crust on one side.
- Pan heatAn ounce of butter or lard is roughly 2 tablespoons. Butter alone will brown and burn before ten minutes are up over the heat this needs, so use lard, clarified butter or a neutral oil, and add a knob of butter in the last two minutes if you want the flavour.
- Timing and thicknessTen minutes suits a thick chop, perhaps an inch and a half, and should leave it pink; a supermarket loin chop of an inch or less will be done in five to six. Pull at around 145F/63C at the centre and rest five minutes.
- The onion and herbsChopped shallot sprinkled onto a chop in a hot pan will scorch before the meat is cooked. Add it in the final two or three minutes, or stir it into the finishing butter instead.
- Maitre d'hotel butterSoftened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, then rolled in paper and chilled. A slice laid on the hot chop melts into a sauce; the recipe assumes every reader knows this.
- Fat proportion"not more than one-third fat" presumably refers to the band of fat around the eye of the chop; the recipe does not name a cut. Modern lamb is generally leaner than Victorian mutton, and the chop will be smaller, so two per person may be realistic.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is sheep over two years old, stronger flavoured and firmer. It is sold by some butchers and halal suppliers but is not standard; lamb chops work with the method, though they cook faster.
- Yield and costOne pound for two people is generous by modern standards for a main course with sides. The price of 1s 4d per pound is a late Victorian retail figure and has no useful modern equivalent.
Alexis Soyer (1810-1858) was the French-born chef of the Reform Club in London and by some distance the most famous cook in Britain in his lifetime -- an inventor of portable stoves, a writer of cookery books aimed at both rich and poor households, and the man who went to Crimea in 1855 to reorganise army field kitchens. Cassell's, compiling a general dictionary decades later, attaches his name to a chop, though it does not say why. The instruction to rub a cut clove of garlic across the hot dish, or else lightly across the chop itself, is characteristic of the period's cautious approach to garlic in English cooking, where the flavour was wanted as a suggestion rather than an ingredient.