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Mutton Cutlets of Forcemeat
Use cutlets from the neck. Trim neatly and stew them very gently in sauce, broth or stock seasoned with sweet herbs and a trifle of salt. Remove the cutlets from the broth, take off the fat, strain, put back the broth into the pan and boil until of glazing consistency. Dip the cutlets in to glaze them, then set them aside to cool. Mince finely together a little cold veal, a bit of beef suet, or butter, two hard boiled eggs, parsley, onion, mushrooms, cayenne and salt and make a paste by adding a little cream. Roll the cutlets in this forcemeat, then in beaten egg, dip them in bread crumbs and fry, or, brown them in the oven on a tin; add mushrooms to the gravy and serve.
A Victorian way with the cheapest end of the lamb: braise, glaze, jacket in forcemeat, crumb and fry. Nothing here is difficult, but the sequence matters, and the cutlets must be cold and dry before the forcemeat goes on.
- The cutNeck cutlets means the middle neck or scrag of lamb, sold today as neck chops or lamb neck fillet. They are tough and well-marbled, which is why they are stewed first rather than grilled; a loin chop will not survive the same treatment.
- "Mutton" now means lambTrue mutton — sheep over two years — is uncommon outside halal butchers and specialist suppliers. Lamb neck behaves the same way but cooks faster: allow 60-90 minutes of gentle stewing rather than the two hours mutton would want.
- Stew gently means gentlyThe liquid should barely tremble, around 180-190F. A rolling boil squeezes the neck meat tight and no amount of later glazing will loosen it.
- The glazeBoiling the strained, degreased broth down to "glazing consistency" means reducing it to a syrup that coats the back of a spoon and sets tacky as it cools — a small-scale meat glaze. A quart of braising liquid may reduce to no more than a few tablespoons. Watch it closely at the end; it scorches in seconds.
- Chill before coatingThe cutlets must be thoroughly cold and the glaze set before the forcemeat is applied, or the paste slides off. An hour uncovered in the refrigerator is enough, and drying the surface helps the egg wash grip.
- The forcemeatCold veal turns up repeatedly as a leftover in cookery books of the period; cooked chicken or the trimmings from the lamb itself work as well. The recipe says only "a bit" of suet or butter — roughly a quarter the weight of the meat is a workable proportion — and add the cream a spoonful at a time; the paste should be stiff enough to pat on, not spreadable.
- Oven method"Brown them in the oven on a tin" implies a fairly hot oven; the book gives no temperature, but around 425F, with the cutlets brushed or sprayed with fat and turned once, should brown them in roughly 20 minutes. Frying gives a better crust but the coating is fragile; use a deep pan with an inch of fat and do not crowd it.
- Mushrooms in the gravyThe recipe never says where the gravy comes from; the simplest reading is that some of the reduced braising liquid is kept back. Loosen a few spoonfuls with stock or cream, add sliced mushrooms cooked in butter, and check the salt — reduced glaze concentrates it sharply.
- YieldReckon two neck cutlets per person; eight cutlets serve four with potatoes and a green vegetable.
A braised chop hidden inside a forcemeat coat, breadcrumbed and fried, is a technique borrowed from nineteenth-century professional cookery, and this is a domesticated version of it. The point was economy dressed as elegance: neck of mutton was among the cheapest meat on the butcher's block, and the forcemeat both stretched it and disguised its origin, while the glaze gave a home cook the glossy finish associated with restaurant work. Butterick's cook book, published by the pattern company for a largely middle-class American readership around the turn of the twentieth century, is full of this kind of thing — dishes that use up cold veal and yesterday's stock but arrive at the table looking deliberate.<br><br>The forcemeat itself, bound with hard-boiled egg and cream rather than raw egg, belongs to an English tradition older than the book: minced meat pastes seasoned with parsley, onion and mace or cayenne appear in household manuals from the eighteenth century onward, used to stuff, coat and pad out almost anything.