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Lamb Cutlets in Papers
Take the fat and skin from three cutlets, and dust with pepper and salt. Put three tablespoonfuls of butter into a fryingpan, and place it on the fire, when it has melted sufficiently put in the cutlets, and fry them for a quarter of an hour; add one teaspoonful of lemon juice and one teaspoonful of finely minced parsley, one tablespoonful of Worcestershire sauce, dust in one tablespoonful of flour and cook for another five minutes. Remove the cutlets and add four tablespoonfuls each of glaze and water to the liquor in the pan, stir well until the glaze is melted, and then cool. Fold as many sheets of paper as there are cutlets to the size of note paper, and cut them so that when they open they will be in the shape of a heart. Place them in warm butter, and allow them to stand for a little time. When the sauce is cold spread it over the cutlets, and place them one at a time on the side of the papers, with the bones turned toward the point of the heart. When all are thus prepared range them on a baking-sheet and cook in the oven for ten minutes. Dress them on a dish in a circle, and fill up the hollow with fried potatoes. Lamb Cutlets, Jardiniere Select a dozen or so of lamb cutlets, trim them to a like shape and size, dust with pepper and salt, and place them in the bottom of a flat stewpan; put a small lump of butter in with and fry over a clear fire. When done on one side turn over and cook the other. After the meat is done strain the butter off the cutlets, put in a little melted glaze, and turn them about over the fire for two or three minutes. Mash some boiled potatoes, and form them in a border on a hot dish; arrange the cutlets in a circle on the border, fill the center with a garnish of new vegetables, and serve with a sauceboatful of freshly made gravy well thickened.
Lamb Cutlets, Villeroy Trim the desired number of lamb cutlets, place them in a stewpan with a lump of butter, and fry; when cooked, press them between two plates to cool. Trim the cutlets again, dip them in a little villeroy sauce, sprinkle over them some fine herbs, place them on a cold baking sheet, and let the sauce set; lay some breadcrumbs over the sauce. Put some lard or butter into a fryingpan, and when it is boiling put the cutlets in, and fry both sides equally until nicely browned. Place a folded napkin on a hot dish, drain the cutlets, put them on it, garnish with fried parsley, and serve.
Three related Waldorf treatments of lamb cutlets, of which the first is a côtelette en papillote. The instructions assume a professional larder — chiefly a pot of meat glaze — and a professional tolerance for well-done lamb.
- The hinge: cut back the frying timeA quarter-hour in the pan will take a thin rib cutlet well past grey. Modern practice is 3 to 4 minutes a side for a 3/4-inch cutlet, to an interior around 130-135F, then the extra minutes for the flour and sauce. The paper parcel gives another 10 minutes of cooking, so the cutlets should come out of the pan short of done.
- Glaze"Glaze" is glace de viande: brown veal or lamb stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. Reduced demi-glace or a good commercial glace works; the point is that it stiffens on cooling so the sauce clings to the cutlet rather than running off into the paper.
- The papersUse baking parchment, not writing paper; modern printing and writing papers are sized and bleached for other purposes. Brush with butter rather than dipping, fold the heart shut and crimp the edge in overlapping pleats so steam stays in.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. For a 10-minute papillote that needs to puff and colour the paper without scorching it, 400-425F is right.
- Worcestershire and flourA tablespoon of flour dusted into 3 tablespoons of butter is roughly a roux; it needs the full five minutes of cooking or the finished sauce tastes raw. The Worcestershire is doing the work that anchovy and tamarind do in a brown sauce, so hold back on additional salt.
- Villeroy sauceA very thick allemande — velouté enriched with egg yolk and reduced until it coats a cutlet and sets solid when chilled. Chilling is not optional: the sauce must be firm before crumbing or it will slide off in the fat.
- Fried parsleyDry, whole parsley sprigs dropped into fat at about 350F for 15 to 20 seconds. Wet parsley will spit violently; spin it dry first.
- YieldTwo to three cutlets a person. The papillote recipe as written is one serving; the jardinière, with its dozen cutlets, serves four to six.
Cooking en papillote — in a buttered paper case, cut as a heart so the fold falls along the spine — was standard French restaurant practice by the middle of the nineteenth century, and the paper case did double duty: it trapped the aroma and it arrived at the table looking like something a kitchen had troubled over. Oscar Tschirky was not a cook by trade but the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, and his 1896 book reads like a transcription of a working brigade's repertoire, which is why three versions of lamb cutlets sit here in a row with no explanation of the shared groundwork. The papillote and the jardinière lean on a pot of meat glaze kept permanently on the stove, the sort of thing a hotel kitchen had and a household did not. The Villeroy sauce is generally traced to the Duc de Villeroy of the court of Louis XV, though as with most of the great sauce attributions the connection is traditional rather than documented; jardinière simply means the garnish of spring vegetables, cut to matching shapes, filling the center of the ring.