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Lamb Cutlets and Spinach
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 or 5 persons.- 8 cutlets, egg and bread-crumbs, salt and pepper to taste, a little clarified butter.
AVERAGE COST, 1s. per lb.
Cut the cutlets from a neck of lamb and shape them by cutting off the thick part of the chinebone. Trim off most of the fat and all the skin and scrape the top part of the bones quite clean. Brush the cutlets over with egg, sprinkle them with breadcrumbs and season with pepper and salt. Now dip them into clarified butter, spinkle over a few more bread-crumbs and fry them over a sharp fire, turning them when required. Lay them before the fire to drain and arrange them on a dish with spinach in the centre, which should be previously well boiled, drained, chopped and seasoned.
TIME.-About 7 or 8 minutes.
SEASONABLE from Easter to Michaelmas.
Note.-Peas, asparagus, or French beans may be substituted for the spinach or lamb cutlets may be served with stewed cucumbers, Soubise sauce, sauce, &c. &c.
Lamb, Roast Fore-quarter of.
INGREDIENTS. - Lamb, a little salt.
AVERAGE COST, 1s. per lb.
To obtain the flavour of lamb in perfection, it should not be long kept; time to cool is all that it requires; and though the meat may be somewhat thready, the juices and flavour will be infinitely superior to that of lamb that has been killed 2 or 3 FORE-QUARTER OF LAMB. days. Make up the fire in good time, that it may be clear and brisk when the joint is put down. Place it at a sufficient distance to prevent the fat from burning and baste it constantly till the moment of serving.
Lamb should be very thoroughly done without being dried up and not the slightest appearance of red gravy should be visible, as in roast mutton; this rule is applicable to all young white meats. Serve with a little gravy made in the dripping-pan, the same as for other roasts and send to table with it a tureen of mint sauce. A. cut lemon, a small piece of fresh butter and a little cayenne should also be placed on the table so that when the carver separates the LAMB, BOILED LEG OF. shoulder from the ribs, they may be ready for his use; if, however, he should not be very expert, we would recommend that the cook should divide these joints nicely before coming to table.
TIME. Fore-quarter of lamb weighing 10 lbs., 1 to 2 hours.
SEASONABLE. -Grass lamb, from Easter to Michaelmas.
Two entries run together here: breaded lamb cutlets with spinach, and a roast fore-quarter. Both were written for an open coal fire, and the second is the one that needs the most translation.
- The cutletsA "neck of lamb" cut into cutlets is what a butcher now sells as a rack; ask for it chined and frenched and the trimming described here is already done. Eight cutlets implies most of a best end; the recipe gives no thickness, so treat 7 or 8 minutes as a figure for thin cutlets and judge by eye.
- The double crumbingEgg, crumbs, clarified butter, then more crumbs is not a slip — it builds a thicker crust than a single coating and the butter carries browning into the crumb. Chill the coated cutlets 20 minutes before frying so the layers set and stay put.
- "A sharp fire"High heat: a heavy pan, clarified butter or a butter-and-oil mix shimmering, about 3 minutes a side. Clarified butter matters here because whole butter will blacken at that temperature.
- DonenessBeeton insists on no red gravy at all, which was standard Victorian practice for young meat. Modern kitchens take lamb cutlets to about 130-135F for pink and blushing; if you follow the original to the letter expect firm, grey meat.
- Draining"Lay them before the fire to drain" means keep hot while the fat runs off. A rack over a tray in a 200F oven does the same job in five minutes without steaming the crust.
- The spinachNo quantity is given. For 4 or 5 people, allow about 2 lb fresh spinach; wilt, drain hard by pressing in a sieve, chop, then season with salt, pepper and a knob of butter. It should be dry enough to hold a mound in the centre of the dish.
- Soubise sauceNamed in the note and not explained: a béchamel enriched with onions cooked soft in butter and passed through a sieve, so it comes to the table pale and sweet rather than oniony.
- The roast fore-quarterA 10 lb fore-quarter turned on a spit before a brisk fire is not equivalent to any oven setting; the book gives none. In an oven a moderate 325-350F and a thermometer are the safer guides, and 1 to 2 hours looks short for a joint that size cooked through as the recipe demands.
- SeasonEaster to Michaelmas is roughly late March or April to 29 September, the old English window for grass-fed lamb. Meaningless now, but it explains why the recipe pairs the meat with spring spinach, peas and asparagus.
Cutlets crumbed, fried and arranged round a green vegetable was one of the workhorse entrées of the Victorian dinner table — showy enough for a served course, cheap enough that Beeton could quote a shilling a pound. The distinction the second entry draws between "grass lamb" and animals kept longer is a real one: before refrigeration, English lamb was seasonal, and house lamb raised indoors for the winter market commanded high prices while grass lamb from Easter onward was the ordinary article. The insistence that lamb show "not the slightest appearance of red gravy" reflects a general nineteenth-century rule that white meats be cooked through, a conviction that outlasted the fire it was written for and only really gave way in British kitchens in the twentieth century. The garbled sentences here — the repeated substitution clause, "seasoned and seasoned", "Soubise sauce, sauce" — read more like transcription slips than anything else, though the text also passed through the many resettings and expansions of Beeton made after her death in 1865.