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Four Truffles
وو وو وو Whites of two Eggs ,, (previously cooked).
Cut the carrot into strips to cook. Cut the vegetables up neatly, put them in a stewpan, and L keep them warm in a bain-marie. Cut the cutlets, trim, mix the ham with the bread-crumb, pepper and salt, egg and bread-crumb them. Fry them a nice brown in about three ounces of butter; arrange them on a dish in a circle. Put the chips of vegetables in the centre of the cutlets, and pour Reform sauce round.
The page has come through the scanner badly: the ingredient list has collapsed into stray marks, so the quantities for everything except the butter are lost. What survives is recognisably Cutlets Reform, and the method is complete enough to follow if you supply the amounts yourself.
- What the dish actually isCutlets crumbed with ham, fried, ringed on a dish and garnished with a julienne of truffle, cooked egg white, carrot and ham; other versions of the dish add tongue and gherkin. The recipe does not name the meat, though Reform cutlets are conventionally lamb or mutton. The sauce is poured round the outside rather than over the crumb.
- The missing quantitiesOf the ingredient list only the two egg whites survive, plus the three ounces of butter for frying named in the method. Reckon on eight to twelve trimmed lamb cutlets for four to six people, two ounces of lean cooked ham chopped fine to every four ounces of dry breadcrumbs, and the four truffles of the title cut into fine strips.
- "Egg and bread-crumb them"Flour the cutlets lightly, dip in beaten egg, then press into the ham-and-crumb mixture. Chill the coated cutlets 20-30 minutes before frying or the crust will slide off in the pan.
- The hinge: do not overcook the cutletsTrimmed lamb cutlets need roughly three minutes a side in butter over medium heat to reach a rosy centre. The instruction to fry them "a nice brown" refers to the crumb; cook until the meat is done through and the crust risks scorching while the lamb goes grey.
- Bain-marieA pan of hot, not boiling, water with the garnish pan standing in it. A wide skillet of water at about 160F does the same job. The julienne is only being held warm, not cooked further.
- Cutting the garnishEverything in the garnish should be matchstick strips of the same length, which is why the carrot is cut into strips before cooking rather than after. Cook the carrot strips briefly in salted water so they still have some bite.
- Reform sauceNot a supermarket item. It is a poivrade or peppery demi-glace finished with redcurrant jelly and a little vinegar; if you are not making a stock-based sauce from scratch, a good reduced brown sauce sharpened with jelly and red wine vinegar is the practical substitute.
- TrufflesFresh truffles at the weight this recipe assumes are now a luxury out of proportion to the rest of the dish. Preserved truffle, or dark mushrooms cut in the same julienne, keeps the look and the colour contrast the garnish depends on.
Cutlets Reform is one of the few Victorian restaurant dishes whose birthplace is not in doubt: it is generally traced to Alexis Soyer, chef of the Reform Club in Pall Mall from 1837, and it carried the club's name onto hotel and club menus for the next century. The ham in the crumb and the sharp, jelly-sweetened brown sauce are the signature; the julienne garnish of truffle, tongue, egg white and carrot is the sort of knife-work display that made the dish a showpiece.