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Mutton Cutlets, with Tomato Puree
Trim cutlets from well-hung mutton, beat them into shape after removing the chinebone, dip them into dissolved butter, brush them with egg, and cover with bread-crumbs. Fry in boiling fat, turning them frequently during the frying. Put them on blotting-paper before the fire to drain. Have ready a puree of fresh tomatoes, made as follows. Pick a pound of ripe tomatoes, break them open, and put them without their seeds into a stewpan with an onion or a couple of shallots, sweet herbs and spice if liked, salt, and pepper; stir over a slow fire until the tomatoes can be pulped through a hair-sieve; return the pulp to the stewpan to simmer; add an ounce of butter well worked together with a little flour, and stir in two ounces of meat-glaze. Arrange the cutlets a little overlapping each other in a circle, and fill the centre with the puree. Serve hot. Time, ten minutes to dress cutlets. Probable cost, 10d. per pound. Sufficient, nine or ten cutlets for a dish.
A straightforward crumbed cutlet with a fresh tomato sauce; the only unfamiliar parts are the butchery language, the meat-glaze and the Victorian draining method.
- The cut"Cutlets" here are rib chops from a rack of lamb or mutton; the recipe simply says to trim them. The chine bone is the section of backbone at the thick end — ask the butcher to remove it, as it makes the chops impossible to cut through neatly.
- Mutton versus lambWell-hung mutton (sheep over two years) is rarely stocked; lamb rack is the standard substitute and cooks faster. If you do find mutton, expect a stronger flavour and a slightly tougher chop that benefits from the beating the recipe calls for.
- Meat-glazeTwo ounces of glace de viande — brown stock reduced to a syrupy, near-solid state. Commercial demi-glace or a concentrated stock paste stands in; use those sparingly, as they tend to be salty, and season last.
- Frying fat"Boiling fat" means fat hot enough that the crumb sets on contact; in a modern shallow pan that is somewhere around 350–375F, though the book gives no temperature. Turning frequently, as instructed, keeps the coating from scorching before the centre is done.
- Blotting-paperKitchen paper on a warm plate does the same job. Better still, drain on a rack in a low oven so the crumb stays crisp underneath.
- The tomato pureeA pound of tomatoes reduces to very little. The pulp is pushed through a sieve, so skins can stay on during cooking; the beurre manié (butter worked with flour) goes in at the end, off a hard boil, and needs a couple of minutes' simmering to lose the raw flour taste.
- DonenessThe book allows ten minutes to dress the cutlets, which suits fairly thin chops of around three-quarters of an inch. Thicker cutlets are better browned in the pan and finished for a few minutes in a moderately hot oven.
- YieldNine or ten cutlets served as a ring; the book says only that this is sufficient for a dish, which would be roughly four as a main course, more if part of a larger meal.
The arrangement of cutlets standing in an overlapping circle with a garnish heaped in the middle is en couronne, an arrangement often associated with nineteenth-century service, where dishes could come to table already composed rather than carved in front of the diners. Tomatoes had moved from suspicion to respectability in British kitchens over the course of the century, and by the time Cassell's dictionary appeared a fresh tomato puree may well have been seen as an alternative to the older brown sauces. Meat-glaze belongs to the same professional tradition, and its presence in a domestic dictionary shows how far restaurant technique had filtered into middle-class household cooking. The costing in pence per pound was a standard feature of the book, aimed at the mistress of the house planning against a weekly budget.