Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Lamb Chops with Champagne Sauce
Lamb Chops with Champagne Sauce
Pare neatly and flatten half a dozen lamb chops, season with one pinch of salt and one-half pinch of pepper, fry slightly in a stewpan with one ounce of butter and for a space of one minute on each side, then allow them to cool. Cover the surfaces with chicken forcemeat, wrap them in a skin taken from the stomach of a pig, then dip in beaten egg and fresh bread crumbs; cook in a stewpan with four ounces of butter for four minutes on each side. Arrange a paper frill at the end of each chop, and serve with one-half pint of hot champagne sauce on the dish and the chops dressed over.
A classic côtelette en crépine under an American name: chops sealed, jacketed in forcemeat and caul, breaded and shallow-fried. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the ingredients need sourcing before you start.
- The caul, not the stomach"A skin taken from the stomach of a pig" is caul fat, the lacy membrane from around the abdominal organs, sold frozen by most whole-animal butchers. Soak it in tepid water until pliable, pat dry, and cut squares large enough to wrap each chop once with a small overlap; it melts away in the pan and glues the forcemeat to the meat.
- Chicken forcemeatThe recipe assumes you have it already made and gives no formula. A modern mousseline will do: raw chicken breast pounded or processed smooth with egg white and cream, seasoned, kept very cold — say 8 oz of breast to one white and 4 fl oz of cream for six chops, though period forcemeats were often bound with a panada instead. Spread it thin, about a quarter inch; thicker and it risks still being raw when the crumbs are brown.
- StewpanHere the pan is being used for frying rather than stewing, so a heavy skillet or straight-sided sauté pan wide enough to hold six chops without crowding will do; otherwise fry in two batches.
- Butter quantitiesFour ounces is a whole stick, and it will brown and speck before eight minutes are out. Clarified butter, or butter cut with a spoonful of neutral oil, holds up better at frying temperature.
- Timing and donenessOne minute per side to seal, then four minutes per side to finish, implies a fairly thin chop. The forcemeat is the limiting factor, not the lamb: it should reach 165F, which may well carry the chop past medium. A probe through the coating into the farce is the only reliable check.
- Champagne sauceNot given here. A reasonable reading is a chicken velouté or light demi-glace finished with a reduction of dry champagne and a little butter. Half a pint is one cup, poured onto the platter with the chops set over it rather than napped on top, so the crumb stays crisp.
- Paper frillsThe frill goes on the bared rib bone, which means frenching the chops when you pare them. Purely decorative, and easily skipped.
- YieldSix chops serves three as a main course, or six as one course of a longer menu.
Oscar Tschirky's book gathers the repertoire of a hotel kitchen working in the French grand style, and this dish is that style barely translated: côtelettes en crépine, chops jacketed in mousseline and caul, is a standard of the nineteenth-century French kitchen, and the caul is doing the same work here that it does in a crépinette or a faggot — holding a soft farce against something firmer while it cooks. What makes it American, and specifically Waldorf, is the champagne. Sauces built on a reduction of wine were routine, but naming one for champagne on a printed menu advertised the cellar as much as the sauce, and the house — the Waldorf alone until the Astoria was joined to it in 1897 — was selling both. The paper frill belongs to the same impulse: a chop that arrives dressed, on a pool of sauce.