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Breaded Mutton Chops
Wipe and trim chops, sprinkle with salt and pepper, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs, fry in deep fat from five to eight minutes, and drain. Serve with Tomato Sauce, or stack around a mound of mashed potatoes, fried potato balls, or green peas. Never fry but four at a time, and allow fat to reheat between fryings. After testing fat for temperature, put in chops and place kettle on back of range, that surface of chops may not be too brown while the inside is still underdone.
A deep-fried breaded chop, a standard of the Farmer school and still sound technique once you translate the range work into thermometer numbers.
- Fat temperatureThe book says only to test the fat before the chops go in. For a raw, breaded chop, aim for roughly 350-365F on a thermometer and hold it there; much below that the crumbs soak fat, much above and they burn before the meat cooks.
- Why only four at a timeEach cold chop drops the oil temperature sharply. Frying in small batches and letting the fat climb back to temperature between them is the whole reason this recipe works, and it applies just as much to a modern pot as to a cast-iron kettle.
- The back of the rangeMoving the kettle to the cooler rear of a coal range meant dropping the heat as soon as the chops were in, so the surface would not brown before the interior cooked through. On a gas or induction hob, turn the burner down once the chops are in and manage the oil to hold around 340-350F for the balance of the time.
- Crumb, egg, crumbThat order matters: a first light coat of dry crumbs gives the beaten egg something to grip on a damp chop, and the second crumbing then holds fast instead of sloughing off in the fat. Beat the egg with a tablespoon of water or milk to thin it.
- Doneness, not minutesFive to eight minutes suits a relatively thin chop; thicker cuts will need longer, and the recipe itself warns against a brown surface over an underdone interior. Lamb is safe at 145F with a three-minute rest — cook to temperature rather than to the clock.
- Mutton versus lambMutton — sheep over about a year, often much older — is rarely sold in American markets now. Substitute lamb rib or loin chops, and expect a milder, more tender result that needs the shorter end of the timing.
- Crumbs"Crumbs" here means stale bread crumbs dried and rolled fine, not the coarse commercial variety. Dry them in a low oven and sift; panko fries well but gives a shaggier crust than the smooth coating the book intends.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. If you reckon two chops a person, four diners means two batches of four, with the fat brought back up to temperature in between.
Breading and deep-frying a chop was a way of making a plain cut look like restaurant cookery, and the *Boston Cooking-School Cook Book* is full of such transformations: the crumb coating, the mound of mashed potato, the ring of chops standing around it. Fannie Farmer's insistence on testing the fat and on frying in small batches reflects her larger project — replacing the older language of "a good handful" and "a brisk fire" with something a novice could reproduce, which is the same impulse behind her famous level measurements. Mutton's near-disappearance from American tables is a twentieth-century development; in 1896 it was ordinary butcher's meat, cheaper and stronger-flavoured than lamb, and a robust sauce or a bland starch alongside is often said to have been the usual way of taming it.