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Lamb or Mutton Cutlets
Take the cutlets from the loin, trim and remove the fat; dip them in cold water, season with pepper and sprinkle flour also, on both sides. Wet the inside of a thick saucepan with cold water, leaving about two tablespoons of the latter in the pan. Lay the cutlets in flat, place over a gentle fire and simmer slowly and carefully for one hour or more, turning the cutlets when half done. Unless cooked slowly the cutlets will not be tender or good. There should be sufficient gravy to serve vith them. If not, a little more water should be added.
This is a braise disguised as a chop recipe: the cutlets steam in their own juices with barely two tablespoons of water. It works, but only if the heat is genuinely low and the pan is genuinely tight.
- What a "cutlet" is hereCutlets from the loin are what a butcher now calls loin chops, with the fat trimmed close. Rib chops behave the same way if that is what you can get.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is sheep over about two years old, strong-flavoured and firm, and it is what justifies the hour. It is sold at halal and specialty butchers but rarely at supermarkets; lamb loin chops will be tender in 25 to 35 minutes by this method, so check early rather than trusting the stated time.
- The hinge: a lid and the lowest heatThe recipe calls for a "gentle fire" and insists twice on slow cooking, warning that fast cooking ruins the meat. Two tablespoons of water in an open pan will be gone in ten minutes, so cover the pan and keep the flame at the lowest setting the burner will hold, or use a heat diffuser.
- "Thick saucepan"A heavy cast-iron or enamelled pan, wide enough that the chops lie flat in one layer without overlapping. Crowding them means they stew unevenly and the little gravy scorches under the top layer.
- Season with salt tooThe original calls only for pepper and flour. Salt the chops as well; without it the pale, unbrowned meat and the thin gravy both taste flat.
- Why there is no browningWetting the pan and the meat leaves no room for a sear, and the book offers no reason for it. If you want colour, sear the chops dry first in the same pan, then add the water and proceed; the gravy will be darker and better.
- The gravyWhat collects is a few spoonfuls of concentrated meat juice, not a sauce. Loosen it with a splash of hot water or stock at the end and spoon it straight over the chops; there is not enough to thicken.
- YieldTwo loin chops per person, so a pan of six to eight serves three or four. Traditional accompaniments in this book's period would be mashed potato and a green vegetable, with mint sauce or currant jelly alongside.
The Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from the pattern and magazine publisher Butterick, whose business was selling practical instruction to households of modest means, and this recipe shows that priority plainly: no butter, no fat, no oven, one pan and a very low flame. The book's insistence on mutton as well as lamb is also of its time: mature sheep was ordinary market meat in 1911 and had largely disappeared from American butchers' counters by the middle of the century, when a taste for young, mild lamb took over. The word cutlet comes through French côtelette, a little rib, which is why it once meant a chop on the bone rather than the boneless slice it usually names now.