Bread-crumbs (Trim the cutlets egg)

This page is a fragment: the tail of one cutlet recipe running straight into the ingredient list of the next, which is how these Edwardian entrée sections were set. What survives is a complete method for crumbed cutlets with two sauces and a garnish, and enough of the Provençale recipe to see where it was going.

• The hinge: dry the cutlets firstEgg-and-crumb coating slides off wet meat. Pat the trimmed cutlets thoroughly dry, flour them lightly, then egg and crumb; press the crumbs on and let them sit ten minutes before frying so the coating sets.
• Best end of neckThis is the rack — the rib section that yields eight or so cutlets. Ask for a rack of lamb chined and French-trimmed. Three pounds of it serves four as an entrée, though at the table sizes of the period it was one course among several.
• Mutton versus lambMutton is older sheep — generally over a year or two — strong-flavoured and firmer; it is hard to find now and usually means a specialist butcher. Lamb cutlets substitute directly and cook faster — three to four minutes a side in butter over moderate heat, since the crumb browns before the meat is done.
• Frying in butterPlain butter at cutlet-frying heat will blacken. Use clarified butter, or half butter and half neutral oil, and keep the pan at a steady medium so the crumb colours in the same time the meat cooks through.
• Soubise sauceWhite soubise is a béchamel heavily enriched with onions cooked without colour, then sieved or blended smooth. Half a pint is 10 imperial fl oz — roughly a cup and a quarter — and it should coat a spoon, not pour.
• Tongue, truffles and macaroniThe garnish is a salpicon: everything diced small and bound in the white sauce. Pickled ox tongue from a deli works; for truffles, a small quantity of good preserved truffle or truffle paste is closer to the intent than truffle oil. Cook the macaroni short of soft, as it sits in hot sauce.
• The border of potatoMashed potato piped into a ring and browned briefly under a hot grill (or in a 425F oven) holds its shape. Standard soft mash will slump under the sauce; stiffen it with an egg yolk and keep the milk to a minimum.
• Two sauces, two temperaturesThe white sauce with garnish goes in the centre and the brown sauce — an espagnole or reduced demi-glace — is poured round the outside. Have both hot and the plates hot; this is a dish that dies in the assembly.