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Cold Mutton Cutlets
Trim one dozen rib cutlets neatly, remove every particle of fat. Lard them thickly on one side, place them in the bottom of a stewing-pan, larded side up, add one small carrot sliced, one onion, one bay leaf, a sprig of parsley, and six whole pepper-corns, cover with stock, bring quickly to a boil, then put on the back part of the fire, where it cannot possibly boil, for one hour, adding salt fifteen minutes before they are done. Take out, drain, and put them to press between two flat dishes. Trim the bones with paper quillings and serve cold around a bed of tender cabbage dressed with mayonnaise.
MUTTON en PAPILLOTE 1 cup of bread crumbs 6 loin cutlets Yolk of one egg I onion 2 tablespoonfuls of butter Put one tablespoonful of butter in a frying pan, when hot, brown the cutlets on both sides, take out and season with salt and pepper. Add the remainder of the butter to the frying pan and the onion cut into slices, stir until a golden brown. When done take from the fire, add the bread crumbs, egg, and a tablespoonful of chopped parsley. Cut six pieces of white paper in a heart like shape, large enough to hold one cutlet each. Put a tablespoonful of the mixture on one side of the paper; put a cutlet on top of this, then another spoonful of the mixture on top of that, fold the other half of the paper over all. Fold the edges lightly together one over the other. Place in a hot oven for fifteen minutes. Serve in the papers with sauce Béchamel.
Two mutton dishes from a summer-cooking book: one poached and pressed to be eaten cold, one baked in paper. Both hinge on gentle heat.
- The critical instruction"Where it cannot possibly boil" is the whole recipe. Held well below a boil, at a bare shiver, the cutlets stay tender and the stock stays clear; at a rolling boil they seize, throw scum and turn stringy, and the fault shows badly once the meat is cold.
- LardingLarding means threading strips of chilled pork back fat through the surface of the meat with a larding needle. Trimmed rib cutlets have no fat left, hence the step. If you have neither needle nor back fat, thin bacon or pancetta laid over the top and tied does the same job less elegantly.
- MuttonMutton is sheep over two years old, stronger and firmer than lamb, and rarely sold in American supermarkets. Lamb rib chops work; halal and Caribbean butchers are the usual source for true mutton. Rib cutlets are what are now sold as rack chops, one bone each.
- Paper quillingsFrilled paper cuffs slipped over the trimmed bone ends, standard Victorian garnish for chops and crown roasts. Sold as cutlet frills. Purely decorative and safely skipped.
- PressingThe recipe says only between two flat dishes; in practice a weight on top and a few hours in the cold. Pressing compacts the fibres so the cold cutlet slices cleanly rather than shredding.
- Papillote paper and oven"White paper" here means plain unwaxed kitchen paper; use parchment, and butter it. A "hot oven" in this period is usually taken as somewhere around 400-450F. Fifteen minutes at that heat is enough because the cutlets are already browned; the paper is finishing them and trapping steam, not cooking them from raw.
- The stuffingOne cup of crumbs, a whole raw egg yolk, browned onion and parsley makes a stiff paste rather than a loose crumb. Season it; the recipe salts the meat and forgets the mixture.
- BéchamelBechamel -- The period sauce is milk thickened with a white roux, often infused with onion and bay and sometimes finished with cream. The recipe simply says to serve it with the cutlets in their papers.
- YieldTwelve cutlets serve six as a cold main course, more as part of a buffet. The papillotes are one cutlet per person.
Books of "hot weather dishes" were a small but distinct genre in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, written for households with a coal range that made summer cooking miserable and no refrigeration beyond an icebox. Their solution was food cooked once, early, and served cold: pressed meats, moulded galantines, mayonnaise-dressed salads. The cold cutlets here are poached in stock, pressed flat and dressed up with paper frills so that leftovers read as a composed dish. The second recipe uses the French en papillote technique, generally traced to eighteenth-century French cookery and still standard for fish; the paper case seals in steam and, in a period kitchen, spared the cook from watching a pan. Mutton was then the ordinary sheep meat of Britain and America, which is why a summer cooking book reaches for it without comment.