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Mutton Cutlets, Braised
Cut and trim six or eight cutlets. Take an onion and a carrot, and cut them into small pieces. Cut two ounces of ham into dice and fry them in a little butter for three or four minutes in a stewpan. Then lay in the cutlets with the vegetables, pepper and salt to taste, a sprig of parsley and thyme, and six pepper-corns. Pour over them a quart of good stock, and stew all gently for an hour; then pour off half a pint of the stock into a fresh saucepan. Mix a tea-spoonful of arrowroot smoothly with a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup; stir this into the half pint of stock when at boiling point, and simmer until nicely thickened. Add a tea-spoonful of red currant jelly, and stir till it is melted. Take out the cutlets, arrange them on a hot dish, pour the sauce over, and serve.
A straightforward braise that works exactly as written; the only real decisions are the cut of meat and how far you reduce the sauce.
- The cutletsThese are single-bone chops from the best end of neck (the rack) of lamb or mutton, trimmed of surplus fat. The recipe says only "cut and trim", so scraping the bone end clean ("French-trimming") is optional. Six to eight serve three or four people; ask for a rack of eight and have the butcher cut it down.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is sheep over two years old — stronger, leaner, and firmer. It is sold by some butchers and at halal counters but is not a supermarket item. Lamb chops will do, but they need less than the full hour; check at 35–40 minutes.
- StewpanA wide, heavy pan or shallow flameproof casserole with a lid. The cutlets should sit in one layer with the quart (an imperial quart, about 1.1 litres) of stock more or less covering them.
- Brown the ham firstThe two ounces of diced ham is doing seasoning work, not just adding meat. Let it colour properly in the butter before the vegetables and cutlets go in, or the finished sauce tastes thin.
- ArrowrootStill sold, and still the right choice here — it thickens clear and glossy where flour would cloud. Slake it cold, add it off the fierce boil, and do not hold the sauce at a hard simmer afterwards, as arrowroot thins again if overcooked.
- Mushroom ketchupA thin, dark, salty mushroom-and-spice liquid, nothing like tomato ketchup. It is still made in Britain; a tablespoon of good soy sauce or a dash of Worcestershire gives a comparable savoury depth if you cannot find it.
- The leftover stockOnly half a pint becomes sauce. The rest, well flavoured by an hour with mutton, ham and vegetables, is worth straining and keeping rather than discarding.
- Redcurrant jellyAdded at the end and only until melted — it should round the sauce, not sweeten it obviously. Start with a level teaspoon and taste before adding more.
Braising cutlets in stock rather than grilling them is a French method that Victorian cookery writers took up: the sequence of aromatics, a long gentle stew, then a small quantity of the cooking liquor lifted out, thickened and returned as sauce is the basic grammar of a great many dishes in the book. Two details place it in its period. Mushroom ketchup was a staple British storecupboard seasoning through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, long before tomato ketchup displaced the word, and redcurrant jelly with sheep meat was — and remains — a fixed English pairing, the sharp-sweet fruit set against mutton's strong fat. Mutton itself was the everyday meat of the period; lamb was the luxury, and the shift in British taste toward young lamb came later, which is why so many Victorian recipes call for the longer cooking a mature animal needs.