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Fried Mutton Chops
Have some chops without much fat, dip them in egg, roll them in cracker crumbs, and fry them in hot lard and butter mixed. For the gravy, mix one tablespoon of flour in a little cold water until free from lumps, stir into the gravy and pour over the chops, or serve with tomato sauce.
A plain pan-fried breaded chop with a flour-thickened pan gravy. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how thick a chop should be and how hot the fat should run, so the useful work is filling in those numbers.
- The hinge: fat temperatureEgg-and-crumb coatings need fat at about 350F. Cooler and the crumbs absorb grease and slide off; hotter and the crust colours before the interior is done. Half an inch of fat in a heavy skillet is enough.
- Mutton, and what to buy insteadMutton is older sheep — usually reckoned at over a year, and in British usage over two — strong-flavoured and rarely sold in the United States now. Lamb loin or rib chops behave the same way in the pan; if you find mutton, expect a much heavier flavour, which the tomato sauce option would help cut.
- Chop thickness and timingCut about 3/4 inch thick. Three to four minutes a side is a starting point, varying with the heat of the fat; check with a thermometer — about 130-135F reads rosy, 140F medium. Thin chops overcook before the crumbs brown, so avoid anything under half an inch.
- Lard and butter mixedThe butter is for flavour, the lard for a higher smoke point. Roughly two parts lard to one part butter. Clarified butter or a neutral oil with a knob of butter does the same job.
- Cracker crumbsNineteenth-century cracker crumbs came from plain soda or water crackers, finer and denser than modern panko. Crush unsalted saltines or use dry unseasoned breadcrumbs; season the crumbs, since the recipe gives no salt or pepper at all.
- "Stir into the gravy"The gravy means the fat and browned bits left in the pan. Pour off most of the fat first, leaving two tablespoons or so, then stir in the flour slurry and add stock or water until it loosens to a sauce. Simmer a couple of minutes to cook out the raw flour taste.
- YieldTwo chops per person; a single skillet handles four to six. Fry in batches rather than crowding, or the crumbs steam instead of crisping.
Egg-and-crumbed chops were a staple of Anglo-American cookery through the nineteenth century, and mutton was for most of that period the ordinary meat of the sheep, lamb being a spring luxury. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued its cook book in a similarly compressed style: brief, practical directions of the kind that seem to assume a reader who needed reminding of proportions rather than teaching from scratch. Hence the shorthand here, no salt, no times, no pan size. The alternative of tomato sauce reflects the period's growing enthusiasm for canned and bottled tomatoes, which by 1900 were cheap and widely available.