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Broiled Lamb Cutlets
Cut some cutlets of a neck of lamb and trim them as for mutton cutlets, beat the yolks of two eggs with a little warmed butter, dip in the cutlets, then in breadcrumbs, and then put them on a gridiron over a clear fire; when they are done on one side turn them, arrange on a dish, and serve with gravy. Lamb Cutlets, Duchess Style Trim neatly some cutlets that have been cut off the neck of a lamb, scraping the top of the bone until clean, place them in a fryingpan together with a lump of butter, and fry. When cooked drain the cutlets and leave them until cold. Put into a saucepan, two or three mushrooms a finely chopped onion, a sprig of parsley and a lump of butter; stir them over the fire until hot, then pour in one breakfast cupful of white sauce, the juice of a lemon, a liaison of three well beaten yolks of eggs and one tablespoonful of powdered sugar. Stir the mixture by the side of the fire until it is of the thickness of cream, then dip the cutlets into it, coating them well with the sauce and setting them one side to cool. Brush the cutlets over with beaten yolk of egg, roll them in breadcrumbs, and fry in butter until well browned. Put a puree of green peas in the center of a hot dish, forming the cutlets around it in an upright position and slightly overlapping one another, then serve with a sauceboatful of white sauce.
Two recipes run together here: a plain crumbed cutlet grilled over coals, and the more elaborate à la Duchesse, in which the cutlets are coated in a thickened sauce, chilled, then crumbed and fried. The second is a classic Villeroy treatment and lives or dies on the sauce setting firm.
- The hinge: the liaison must not boilThree egg yolks stirred into hot white sauce with lemon juice will curdle if the pan comes to a full simmer, which is why Oscar says to work "by the side of the fire" — off direct heat, at a gentle warmth. Pull the pan the moment the sauce coats a spoon like heavy cream.
- Chill the coated cutlets properly"Setting them one side to cool" means leaving them until the sauce is firm; refrigeration is the practical modern route, and they handle more easily after an hour or two. Warm, soft sauce will slide off in the breadcrumbs and burst in the frying butter.
- A gridiron over a clear fire"Clear" means the coals have burned down past flame to steady red heat. A charcoal grill or a gas grill on medium is the equivalent; a hot broiler at 6 inches also works, but breadcrumbs scorch fast, so watch rather than time.
- Neck cutletsA butcher's neck-end lamb chops, cut from the shoulder end of the rack, cheaper and fattier than loin chops. A trimmed rack cut into individual chops is the modern stand-in, and "scraping the top of the bone until clean" is simply Frenching.
- DonenessLamb cutlets are best at 130-135F in the center, pink and juicy — three to four minutes a side on the grill for a chop about three-quarters of an inch thick. In the Duchess version the meat is fully cooked at the first frying, so the final fry is only for color.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a teacup: reckon 8 to 10 fl oz. Use a generous cup of white sauce, made thick enough to coat, not a pouring béchamel.
- The tablespoon of sugarProbably there to round the lemon juice in a rich egg-thickened sauce. A teaspoon is plenty for modern palates, and the sauce works without it.
- Yield and serviceTwo to three cutlets per person; the recipe itself names no quantity, so how many it serves depends on how much neck is cut. The upright crown of cutlets around a mound of pea purée needs the chops to be roughly equal in size; overlap them leaning inward so they hold each other up.
Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maître d'hôtel whose name carried the Waldorf's reputation, was never a cook by trade, and his 1896 book reads as a compilation of the hotel's working repertoire alongside a great deal of standard European practice. Both cutlet recipes are squarely in that tradition: the coat-in-sauce, chill, crumb and fry method is the technique French kitchens call à la Villeroy, and "Duchess style" (à la Duchesse) was one of dozens of garnish names that a nineteenth-century professional kitchen used as shorthand — generally denoting a potato or vegetable purée element, here the green peas. The neck of lamb, rather than the loin, was the economical cut for such treatment: heavily sauced, breaded and fried, it reached a table set for guests who would have recognized the presentation long before they recognized the joint it came from.