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Fried Lamb Cutlets
Trim the outer skin of two breasts of lamb, place them in a saucepan, cover with veal stock, and boil slowly. Prepare a veal forcemeat, season highly with herbs and spices, and bind it with a raw egg. When the breasts of lamb are tender bone them and spread the forcemeat over the inside, laying them one on top of the other. Place them between two dishes with a heavy weight on top and leave them for several hours. Take some small bones from the ribs, trim to the shape of cutlet bones and blanch them. Cut the cold breasts into pieces, forming them into the shape of cutlets. Beat two whites and three yolks of eggs together with two tablespoonfuls of oiled butter, the butter being mixed in a drop at a time; brush the cutlets over with a paste brush dipped in the beaten egg mixture, roll them in fine white breadcrumbs that have been seasoned with salt, pepper and, if desired, a small quantity of cayenne pepper. Leave the cutlets for twenty or twenty-five minutes, then egg and breadcrumb them again, proceeding as before; leave again for half an hour, then give them a third coating of egg and bread crumbs. Place a large lump of butter or clarified fat in a large stewpan, place it over the fire until a blue smoke arises, then put in the cutlets and fry to a nice brown. When done drain the cutlets on a sheet of kitchen paper for a minute, stick one of the whitened bones in each and fasten a small paper frill round them. Pile some mashed potatoes in the center of a hot dish, lean the cutlets against them, garnish with fried parsley, and serve with demi-glaze sauce.
This is a classic hotel épigramme of lamb, but as written the construction leaves raw ground veal in the middle of a cold pressed loaf that is then only surface-fried. The glossary below explains the archaic terms; the food-safety points explain why the method itself does not stand up.
- Raw forcemeat, never cooked throughThe veal forcemeat is bound with raw egg and spread between two breasts that have already been cooked in stock. Nothing afterwards cooks it through: the cutlets are fried only long enough to brown a triple crumb coating, and they go into the pan cold and dense, so the raw veal and egg at the centre may well never reach a safe temperature.
- Hours under weight at room temperatureLong standing before cooking -- "Leave them for several hours" pressed between two dishes, then further rests of twenty to twenty-five minutes, half an hour and a third between crumb coatings, keeps a raw meat mixture standing for hours before it ever meets heat. The recipe does not say how cool it should be kept, only that the breasts should be cold when cut. That standing, plus the uncooked centre, is the specific failure here, not the frying.
- Use a current recipeIf you want breaded lamb cutlets or épigrammes, work from a modern recipe in which the forcemeat is cooked and the assembly chilled. Nothing below is intended to make this version workable.
- Veal forcemeatFinely ground veal worked with fat, seasoning and egg, the standard base for quenelles and stuffings. "Season highly with herbs and spices" means it was expected to taste assertive against the bland, stock-boiled breast.
- Oiled butterButter melted until it runs clear and oily, added drop by drop into the beaten eggs so the mixture emulsifies rather than splits. It gives the coating richness and a deeper colour in the pan.
- Blue smokeA nineteenth-century test for fat hot enough to fry, conventionally reckoned somewhere in the region of 375-400F; the recipe allows either a large lump of butter or clarified fat.
- Demi-glaze and frillsDemi-glace: brown veal stock reduced with espagnole until it coats a spoon. The trimmed, blanched rib bones and paper frills are pure dining-room theatre, making a boned-out breast look like a rack chop.
Cutlets shaped from boned, pressed breast of lamb and crumbed are the classic épigrammes d'agneau of French service, generally traced to eighteenth-century Paris kitchens; the standard version pairs a true chop with a breaded cutlet cut from the breast so the plate shows two textures. Breast is a cheap, fatty, awkward cut, and this whole procedure — long braise, forcemeat layer, weighting, triple crumbing, false bone, paper frill — exists to sell it at hotel prices. Oscar Tschirky, maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf from 1893, collected exactly this sort of dining-room-facing dish in his 1896 book: recipes that were as much about how the plate arrived at the table as about how it was cooked. The trimmed blanched bone stuck into each cutlet at the last moment is the tell.