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Mutton Cutlets, with Cucumber
Take the cutlets from a neck of mutton, and trim them nicely. Chop some parsley and shallot very fine, and put them into a little melted butter; dip the cutlets in this, and then in bread-crumbs. Put them in the frying-pan, and fry to a fine light brown. Prepare two cucumbers by dividing them into quarters and removing all seeds. Cut them into quarters and removing all seeds. Cut them into oval shapes about an inch long, boil them in vinegar and water (in equal proportions) till tender. Make a sauce with the trimmings of the cutlets and some minced shallot and herbs; put the cucumbers into the sauce, and make them very hot. Serve with the cucumbers in the centre of the dish, the cutlets arranged round, and the sauce poured over. Probable cost, 10d. per pound.
A Victorian composed dish: crumbed chops around a mound of glazed cucumber, with a gravy made from the bones and trimmings. The instructions assume you are butchering the neck yourself, which is where most of the work now goes.
- The cutletsCutlets come from the best end of neck, the rack, rather than the scrag end. Ask for six to eight single-bone rib chops, French-trimmed if possible, and keep the bones and scraps for the sauce. Mutton (generally sheep over two years) is now rare; lamb rib chops behave the same way but cook faster, so allow about three minutes a side.
- A printing slipThe line "Cut them into quarters and removing all seeds" is repeated in the original. Quarter the cucumbers lengthways once, scrape out the seeds, then cut into the oval pieces.
- "A little melted butter"This is butter melted and cooled to just liquid, not hot, and not the flour-thickened "melted butter" sauce found elsewhere in Victorian books. It carries the parsley and shallot onto the meat and glues on the crumbs; if it is hot the crumbs will slide off in the pan.
- Crumbs and fryingUse dry, fine white crumbs and press them on firmly, then let the chops sit ten minutes before frying so the coating sets. Fry in clarified butter or a butter-oil mix over medium heat — whole butter at the heat needed for "a fine light brown" will blacken the milk solids.
- Turning the cucumber"Oval shapes about an inch long" amounts to what a modern kitchen calls turning: paring each quartered strip into a small barrel, conventionally with seven faces. Largely cosmetic, but it gives pieces that hold their shape in the acid liquid.
- The vinegar and waterEqual parts is very sharp by current taste; one part vinegar to three of water gives tender cucumber without dominating the sauce. Simmer only until a knife slides in, five to eight minutes, then drain well or the sauce will thin.
- The sauceBrown the bones and trimmings, add the shallot and herbs, cover with stock and reduce to a gravy. The recipe does not call for straining; the minced shallot and herbs stay in. Reheat the cucumber in it briefly — long boiling collapses it to a purée.
- Yield and costTwo cucumbers, as the recipe specifies, with eight to ten cutlets will serve four. The "10d. per pound" is a Victorian retail price for neck of mutton, one of the cheaper cuts.
Cassell's belongs to the era when a dish was judged as much by its arrangement as its flavour, and this one is a small exercise in that discipline: cutlets stood in a ring, garnish in the centre, sauce poured over. Cucumbers stewed in vinegar or gravy were a familiar English accompaniment to mutton in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the sharpness presumably set against the fat of the meat. Neck of mutton was a cheap cut, and the recipe's economy is characteristic: the trimmings that a modern cook might throw out become the sauce, and the printed price per pound let a housekeeper cost the meal before ordering it.