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Chops Cooked in Casserole
Dorothy Black.
Fry as many lamb chops as desired in a hot pan without any fat in it, until partially cooked on both sides.
Place in a greased casserole: 1 can peas 1 diced carrot 1½ C raw potatoes, diced Salt, pepper Lay the chops over the vegetables and pour a gravy over them. Make the gravy in the pan in which the chops were browned, using bacon fat, flour and 1 cup of hot water. Bake about 1½ hours in oven.
A one-dish lamb supper of the church-supper era, written for cooks who already knew what it should look like. Two details need attention before you start: the baking time as printed is impossible, and the potatoes need to be cut small enough to cook through.
- The 12-hour bake is a misprintNothing here survives twelve hours in an oven. The intent is almost certainly 1 to 1½ hours at 350F, covered, until the potatoes and carrot are tender and the gravy has thickened around them. Judge by the potatoes, not the clock.
- "Casserole" here means the dishBy the date of this book the word has shifted from the French saucepan to the covered baking dish it names in American kitchens. A 2-quart lidded baking dish or a Dutch oven is right; if it has no lid, use foil so the vegetables steam rather than dry out.
- Browning in a dry panLamb chops carry enough fat to grease their own pan if it is properly hot. Get the pan smoking-hot before the chops go in, leave them alone until they release, and take them out while the centres are still raw — they finish in the oven.
- The gravyDeglazing is the whole point of the step. Roughly 2 tablespoons bacon fat to 2 tablespoons flour, cooked a minute in the chop pan, then 1 cup hot water whisked in and scraped free of the browned bits. It will look thin; the potatoes take up liquid as they bake.
- Canned peasA can of peas in this period was thoroughly cooked and soft, and it was expected to collapse into the dish. Frozen peas behave differently — if you use them, stir them in for the last ten minutes rather than at the start, or they turn grey and mealy.
- Cut the potatoes small1½ cups diced raw potato needs to be a ½-inch dice or smaller to be done in the same time as the chops. Larger pieces will still be chalky when the lamb is overcooked.
- YieldAs written this fills a 2-quart dish and serves three or four, depending on how many chops "as many as desired" turns out to be — figure one or two rib chops per person.
Community cookbooks like this one, sold to raise money, are among the best records of what American households actually ate, and the casserole is one of their signature forms: one dish, browned meat over root vegetables, a flour-and-fat gravy poured over, into the oven. The canned peas are a marker of the period: canned vegetables had become cheap and unremarkable enough to be written into a recipe without comment, and bacon fat was a kitchen staple rather than something bought as an ingredient. Recipes in these books are credited by name — Dorothy Black here — because the book's readers knew the contributor and could ask her what she meant.