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Lamb Chops with Champagne Sauce
Trim 6 lamb chops, and season with 1 salt-spoonful salt and 1/2 saltspoonful pepper; fry in a tablespoonful of butter, about a minute on each side. Let them cool slightly, and spread chicken force-meat over both sides; cover with beaten egg, and an outside coating of bread-crumbs; fry in 4 tablespoonfuls butter for five minutes on each side.
Put a frill of paper on the end of each chop, and serve on a hot dish with half a pint of champagne sauce poured over.
A Victorian dressed chop: seared, jacketed in chicken forcemeat, breaded and fried again. The order of operations is what makes it work, and the chicken layer is the part that needs watching.
- SaltspoonA saltspoonful is a quarter teaspoon, so the seasoning here is 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper for six chops. That is light by modern taste; season the forcemeat as well.
- Chicken forcemeatA pounded or finely ground chicken paste. Period versions vary: some are bound with egg and cream, others with a bread panada, butter or suet. Keep it very cold so it spreads without breaking, and spread it thin, about 1/4 inch, or the outside will burn before the inside sets.
- The hinge: cooking the forcemeat throughThe raw chicken layer must reach 165F. Fry over medium heat rather than high so the crumb browns in step with the interior, and check with a thermometer through the coating rather than trusting the five minutes.
- Chilling before breadingChilling -- the recipe's 'let them cool slightly' comes before the forcemeat goes on, so the paste does not melt against hot meat. Separately, chilling the coated chops 20-30 minutes after crumbing helps the egg-and-crumb shell hold instead of sliding off in the pan.
- Butter alone will scorchFour tablespoons of butter over ten minutes of frying will brown and burn. Use clarified butter, or half butter and half a neutral oil, and wipe the pan between batches.
- Half a pint of sauceA cup by American measure (an imperial half-pint would be nearer 10 fl oz), generous either way for six chops. No sauce recipe is given on this page, so use a separate one; champagne sauces of the period are generally a velouté or reduced stock finished with dry sparkling wine and butter, so reduce the wine well before mounting with butter.
- Paper frillsThe frill goes over the exposed bone end, which means the chops should be French-trimmed before you start. Purely decorative and entirely optional.
- YieldSix chops serves three as a main course, six as a first course. Serve promptly; the crumb softens under the sauce, so some cooks pool the sauce on the plate rather than pouring it over.