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Mutton Chops, with Vegetables
Where vegetables are to be had fresh from the garden, and in plenty, the following mode of cooking chops will be found economical, as well as wholesome and agreeable to the palate. Fry the chops, having first trimmed them into good shape, in butter, until half done, seasoning them with pepper and salt. Have ready by the time the chops are fried any seasonable vegetables--asparagus tops, peas, celery, carrots, turnips--all cut as nearly the same size as possible, and stewed in a little good white broth. Make a gravy with the butter in the pan, after frying a little shredded onion, thicken it with flour, and add it and the chops to the stewpan with the vegetables. Shake them well together over the fire until they are quite done, and serve with the sauce over and about the chops. Time, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient, two pounds for four persons.
A one-pan braise dressed up as a fry: the chops are browned, the vegetables cooked separately, and the two finished together in a pan gravy. Nearly everything here still works as written, but the meat and the vegetable timings need thought.
- Mutton or lambMutton is meat from a sheep over about two years old, deeper in flavour and firmer than lamb. It is sold by some halal butchers and specialist farms; ordinary lamb loin or shoulder chops substitute directly, but will cook a few minutes faster and taste milder.
- Half-fry, then finishThe hinge is not overcooking at the frying stage. Brown the chops hard in butter for two or three minutes a side and no more, since they finish in the pan with the vegetables and sauce. Loin chops are best pulled at 130-135F internal and rested; shoulder chops of mutton want longer and slower than twenty minutes will allow.
- "Good white broth"A pale, unbrowned stock, in period usage most often veal or chicken with no roasted bones. A light chicken stock is the closest modern equivalent; avoid dark beef stock, which will muddy both the colour and the point of the dish.
- Cutting the vegetables"All cut as nearly the same size as possible" is doing real work here, but so is staging them. Carrots and turnips want six to eight minutes in the broth, celery four, peas and asparagus tips two. Add them in that order rather than all at once.
- The gravyCook the shredded onion gently in the pan butter until soft and blond, stir in the flour, and let it cook a minute or two before any liquid goes in, or the sauce tastes of raw flour. About a tablespoon of flour to a tablespoon of butter thickens roughly a cup of broth.
- The stated timeTwenty minutes probably covers only the frying and finishing, with the vegetables stewing alongside. Allow forty minutes from a cold start.
- Yield and costTwo pounds of chops for four is generous by modern portions and closer to five or six servings with the vegetables. The "1s. per pound" is a Victorian shilling and has no useful conversion; treat it as the book's note that this was an everyday cut, not a luxury one.
Cassell's ran its Dictionary of Cookery as a vast alphabetical reference for middle-class British households in the later nineteenth century, and this entry sits squarely in its house style: a cheap cut, a kitchen garden, and an argument from economy before one from taste. Mutton was then the ordinary meat of the British table in a way it no longer is, sheep being kept for wool into maturity and eaten afterwards; lamb was the seasonal indulgence. The opening clause, "where vegetables are to be had fresh from the garden, and in plenty," places the dish in a house with ground attached, and the list of asparagus tops, peas, celery, carrots and turnips reads as a late-spring or early-summer garden rather than a shopping list.