Home › The Principles of Cookery › Mutton Escalopes, or Collops, with Fine Herbs
Mutton Escalopes, or Collops, with Fine Herbs
Chop some mushrooms, parsley, and a shallot, and get small thin slices (about two inches square) from the chump end of a loin of mutton. Fry these brown on both sides in a stewpan with an ounce of dissolved butter; the fire should be brisk, and the collops turned several times in the butter. When done, take them out, and keep them warm before the fire. Put in the pan the mushrooms, parsley, and shallot, half an ounce more of butter, and stew for five minutes; then add a table-spoonful of flour, a spoonful of ketchup, a quarter of a pint of stock, and the juice of half a lemon. Stir till thick. Return the collops; make them hot, but do not boil; place them high in the centre of the dish; pour the sauce over, and serve with toasted sippets or potato-balls. Time, fifteen minutes altogether. Probable cost, 10d. per pound.
A quick sauté with a pan sauce built in the same stewpan, written for a coal range but perfectly at home over gas or induction. Two words need translating before you start: chump and ketchup.
- The cutThe chump end is the rear of the loin, where it meets the leg — a lamb chump chop or a boned chump joint gives the same meat. Slice it about 1/4 inch thick and roughly two inches square, as the recipe says; thicker and it will not cook through in the brisk frying the method depends on.
- Ketchup means mushroom ketchupIn a Victorian British kitchen a plain "spoonful of ketchup" generally meant mushroom or walnut ketchup — a thin, dark, salty condiment. Tomato ketchup will make the sauce sweet and pink and wrong. Mushroom ketchup is still sold; a teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce plus a splash of soy is the nearest substitute.
- Quarter of a pint of stockAn Imperial quarter-pint is 5 fl oz, about 150 ml — a scant 2/3 US cup. Use brown lamb or beef stock; the sauce is thickened with only a tablespoon of flour, so a weak stock leaves it thin and pale.
- Fines herbes, 1890s styleThe "fine herbs" here are the English version: mushrooms, parsley and shallot chopped fine, not the French tarragon-chervil-chives mixture. Chop them small enough to stew soft in five minutes; use about 3 oz mushrooms and a heaped tablespoon of parsley.
- The hinge: do not boil at the endThin slices of mutton fried brisk and then simmered will seize and turn grey and tough. Return them to the finished sauce off the direct heat, turn them once or twice to warm through, and serve. Ninety seconds is enough.
- Deglaze rather than start cleanThe instruction to put the herbs straight into the same pan matters. The browned fond from frying the collops is most of the sauce's flavour; scrape it up as the mushrooms release their liquid.
- Sippets and potato-ballsSippets are small triangles of bread fried or toasted and set round the dish. Potato-balls are mashed potato rolled into walnut-sized spheres, egg-and-crumbed and fried, or simply small potatoes turned to shape and boiled.
- YieldThe quantities — an ounce and a half of butter, 5 fl oz of stock — suggest something in the region of a pound of meat, enough for two generously or three as part of a larger meal. Scale the sauce with the meat.
- That priceTenpence a pound is the Victorian cost of mutton and is of historical interest only; it suggests a mid-range family dish rather than a luxury one.
Collop is one of the older words in the English kitchen, meaning a small slice of meat cooked quickly in a pan — it predates the French escalope in English by centuries and survives in Collop Monday, the day before Shrove Tuesday, when the household's remaining meat was traditionally eaten before Lent. The title gives both words, the French term being the more genteel and the English the older. The sauce is assembled from what the fried meat left behind, plus a spoonful of the bottled mushroom ketchup that was a common Victorian shortcut to savoury depth. Building the pan sauce over the fond, finishing with lemon, and warming the meat back through without boiling is a method a modern cook would recognise line for line.