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MUTTON CUTLETS (a la Provencale)
Saw off the upper rib-bones from a neck of mutton, also the chinebone, and divide the meat into neat cutlets, leaving only three inches of bone to each of them. Trim off all superfluous fat, season with pepper and salt, and fry lightly in a stewpan with an ounce of good fresh butter. Make a seasoning as follows. Stew over a slow fire, and in a closed stewpan, ten middle-sized onions chopped fine, and a small bit of garlic. Of the latter, take only enough to flavour, without giving any colour to the butter. When tender, add pepper, salt, and the juice of a lemon, with the yolks of four raw eggs. Stir until the seasoning has become a thick paste; then, with a knife, spread it equally and thickly over the upper side of the cutlets, brush over with beaten egg, and cover with grated Parmesan and fried bread-crumbs. Bake the cutlets with a little good gravy to keep them from sticking to the pan. When done, serve them in a circle round a dish, and fill the centre with potatoes cut to an olive shape or in round balls, and previously fried in butter. Pour a good gravy round the dish. Time, ten minutes to bake. Sufficient, two pounds for four or five persons.
A Victorian treatment of neck cutlets: a thick onion-and-garlic paste bound with egg yolk, crumbed and baked briefly. Two things decide whether it works — the temperature of the onion paste when the yolks go in, and the heat of the oven.
- The yolks are the hingeDraw the onion pan off the heat and let it cool to warm before stirring in the four yolks, then return it to the gentlest heat if it needs thickening. Yolks added to a hot pan will scramble and the paste will refuse to spread.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the book states only "Time, ten minutes to bake." A ten-minute bake on cutlets that are already lightly fried suggests a hot oven, in the region of 425-450F, enough to set the crust and colour the Parmesan without drying the meat.
- The meatA whole neck of mutton, chine sawn out, is a butcher's order rather than a supermarket one. Best end of lamb — a rack, chined, cut into cutlets with a three-inch bone left on — behaves the same way and needs less cooking; mutton from an older animal is stronger in flavour and repays the garlic.
- Ten onionsTen medium onions cook down to a great deal of paste for two pounds of cutlets. Five or six is ample for four servings, stewed covered in butter over low heat for 30-40 minutes until collapsed and pale, with no browning.
- Garlic restraintThe instruction is to take only enough garlic "to flavour, without giving any colour to the butter", which reads as a caution about both quantity and browning. A single clove, finely chopped, stewed with the onions as the recipe directs.
- Fried bread-crumbsThese are crumbs already fried golden in butter, not raw crumbs. Because they enter the oven cooked, they only need to be warmed through in the short bake — which is why the coating comes out crisp rather than pale.
- Potatoes cut to an olive shapeSmall turned potatoes, or scooped balls, fried in butter until golden — what a later kitchen would call château or noisette. Allow 20-25 minutes in a pan; they must be ready as the cutlets come out.
- Gravy"Good gravy" is not defined; a brown gravy or reduced stock rather than a thick flour-bound sauce fits the dish. A little in the baking pan keeps the cutlets from sticking, as the recipe says, and the rest is poured round the dish at serving.
- YieldTwo pounds of trimmed cutlets for four or five, as stated — roughly two cutlets each, which is modest by modern standards if the potatoes are the only accompaniment.
In nineteenth-century English kitchens à la provençale was shorthand for garlic, and this dish uses it exactly that way: a whisper of garlic buried in a mass of stewed onion, present for flavour but forbidden to show itself. The onion paste is close kin to a soubise, the sieved onion purée traditionally said to be named after an eighteenth-century French marshal, here stiffened with egg yolk so it can be spread on the meat and crumbed — a way of turning a plain grilled cutlet into a dish fit for a served course. Cassell's included it among the neck-of-mutton recipes. The turned potatoes in the centre of the ring reflect the period's fondness for the entrée arranged as a circle, a service style that faded once dishes began arriving already plated.