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MUTTON CUTLETS (a la Royale)
Take three pounds of middle neck of mutton, and divide it into cutlets. Place them in a stewpan with cold water, and a few root vegetables (carrot, turnip, and onion) for flavouring. Take out when done, dust with white pepper, and lay on a hot plate till needed. Peel eight onions and place them in half a pint of the liquor, let them simmer gently till done, then pass through a sieve. Mix this pulp with treble the quantity of hot freshly-boiled mashed potatoes, add a small grating of nutmeg, a dust of white pepper, a little salt, a piece of butter the size of a walnut, and a table-spoonful of cream, and beat up with a fork. Egg and bread-crumb the cutlets, and fry them. Pile the potato pulp in the centre of a dish, arrange the cutlets neatly round, and serve.
A two-stage dish: the cutlets are poached in a vegetable broth, then breaded and fried, and served round a mound of onion-enriched mash. Nothing here is difficult, but the order of operations matters more than the ingredient list.
- The hinge: dry the cutlets before crumbingPoached meat comes out wet, and egg-and-breadcrumb will slide off in the pan. Let the cutlets cool on a rack until the surface is dry to the touch, pat them well, then flour lightly before the egg. The instruction to hold them on a hot plate is a Victorian service convenience; cooling them first gives a far better crust.
- Middle neck of muttonThis is the rib end of the neck, sold today as lamb neck chops or middle-neck chops; a butcher will cut them. True mutton (sheep over two years) is rare outside halal and specialist butchers. Lamb shoulder chops are the closest supermarket substitute, and will need less poaching time — 30-40 minutes rather than the hour or more mutton wants.
- Poaching, not boilingBring the pan barely to a tremble and skim the grey foam in the first ten minutes. A rolling boil tightens neck meat and clouds the liquor you need for the onions.
- Half a pint of the liquorAn Imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. Eight onions will not be covered by it; put them in with the liquid, cover the pan, and let them stew in their own moisture, stirring occasionally so nothing catches.
- "A piece of butter the size of a walnut"Roughly 1 oz, or 2 tablespoons. A shelled walnut, not one in its shell.
- "Treble the quantity" of potatoThe original does not say whether it means weight or volume; measuring the sieved onion pulp by volume and using three times as much mashed potato is the simplest reading. Eight onions reduce to a good deal less purée than their raw bulk suggests, so judge the potato against what you actually have in the sieve rather than to a fixed figure. Keep both hot; the mixture stiffens and turns gluey if beaten cold.
- SievingA food mill or drum sieve gives the smooth pulp intended. A blender works but whips the onions to a loose slurry, which thins the potato — reduce the purée in the pan for a few minutes first if you use one.
- FryingShallow-fry in clarified butter or a neutral oil at about 350F, two or three minutes a side. The meat is already cooked; you are only colouring the crumb.
- YieldThree pounds of neck feeds four generously, or six as part of a longer meal. Serve with something sharp — the dish is soft and rich throughout, and the original offers no relief.
Late-Victorian cookery used the "à la Royale" tag in various ways, and here it appears to mean the onion-and-potato purée the cutlets are set around. That purée is close kin to soubise, the classic French onion purée thickened variously with rice, béchamel or, as here, potato, and generally traced in name to the eighteenth-century Prince de Soubise's kitchen. What is more revealing is the frugality underneath the French label: middle neck was among the cheapest cuts on the mutton carcass, the poaching liquor is put to work twice, and the whole construction turns a bony, sinewy piece of meat into something that could be sent to table on a single dish. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery is full of exactly this trade — restaurant presentation applied to butcher's-shop economy.