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Mutton Cutlets, Italian
Trim cutlets from the neck of mutton into good shape; if not even, beat them to make them so. Cut off all superfluous fat. Lay them for a few minutes in a marinade of salad-oil and minced savoury herbs, or, if preferred, dip them in clarified butter, and again into beaten eggs. Cover them with a seasoning made as follows. Chop extremely fine some button mushrooms, or if these cannot be procured use mushroom powder. Prepare bread-crumbs, parsley, and savoury herbs (of each a table-spoonful), and reduce them to powder; shred a shallot, and mince half a tea-spoonful of lemon-peel. Put these ingredients with a little pounded mace into a basin, and when mixed use for the cutlets, and fry a nice light colour in butter. Make a good gravy in the pan by browning a little more butter with a dessert-spoonful or more of flour, moisten with a large cupful of veal stock, adding any sauce (Harvey, Worcester, mushroom ketchup, etc), and a dessert-spoonful of tarragon vinegar. When the sauce has boiled and is thick enough, dish the cutlets in a circle (they should have been kept warm), and pour it round them. Time, about ten minutes. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient, three pounds for six persons.
A Victorian crumbed-and-fried chop with a herb-and-mushroom coating and a quick pan sauce. The main things needing translation are the cut, the two competing coating methods, and the bottled sauces.
- Choose one coating method, not bothThe recipe offers an oil-and-herb marinade or a dip in clarified butter then beaten egg. The butter-and-egg route is what actually glues the dry seasoning on; if you marinate in oil instead, drain the cutlets well and press the crumb mixture on firmly or most of it will end up in the pan.
- The cut"Cutlets from the neck of mutton" means chops from the best end of neck, sold today as lamb rib chops or a rack cut into single ribs. Mutton (sheep over two years) is rare outside halal and specialist butchers; ordinary lamb works and cooks faster. Trim the fat as instructed, since the coating cannot brown properly against a fat cap.
- Mushroom powderStill available as dried porcini or mixed wild mushrooms ground in a spice grinder. The recipe does not say how many mushrooms to use; the powder has the advantage of not wetting the crumb mixture.
- Harvey's sauceA commercial anchovy-and-soy condiment of the period, no longer generally available. Worcestershire sauce is its closest surviving relative and is the sensible substitute; a teaspoon or two is plenty in a cupful of stock.
- Timings"About ten minutes" suits thick mutton cutlets over moderate heat. Modern lamb rib chops of half to three-quarters of an inch need roughly three to four minutes a side for pink in the middle. Keep the butter at a steady moderate heat rather than hot, or the breadcrumb coating darkens before the meat is done.
- MeasuresA dessert-spoonful is about two teaspoons. A "large cupful" of veal stock is 8-10 fl oz; brown chicken or beef stock does the job if you are not making veal stock for six chops.
- Salad-oil and lemon-peelSalad-oil in Cassell's means olive oil. Lemon-peel means the zest only, pared thin and minced, with no white pith.
- Yield and servingThree pounds of cutlets for six, half a pound a head; the recipe does not say how many cutlets that makes. The sauce is poured around rather than over so the crumbs stay crisp, and mashed or pureed potato is often put in the centre of such a circle.
In late-Victorian English cookery books "Italian" attached to a cutlet is often taken to reflect the French sauce italienne/duxelles convention rather than any specific regional Italian dish, and the seasoning here is essentially a dry version of the French duxelles (mushroom, shallot, herbs) borrowed into an English frying pan. Cassell's belongs to the era when the household kitchen leaned heavily on bottled condiments, and the airy instruction to add "any sauce (Harvey, Worcester, mushroom ketchup, etc)" is a good snapshot of the period's larder: Harvey's sauce and mushroom ketchup were as ordinary then as Worcestershire is now. The costing in shillings and the confident "sufficient, three pounds for six persons" mark this out as a book written for a cook working to a household budget, where neck of mutton was an economical cut dressed up with crumbs and a made gravy to serve as a presentable entree.