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Mutton Chops Breaded and Sauted
Flatten eight thick mutton chops, pare nicely and season with one tablespoonful of salt and one teaspoonful of pepper. Dip them in beaten egg and roll in sifted breadcrumbs, place in a sautepan with an ounce of clarified butter. Cook for four minutes on each side, and serve with one-half pint of any sauce or garnishing required.
A plain cutlet method that depends almost entirely on heat control: the crumb coat has to colour in the same time the chop cooks through. Two details in the original will trip up a modern cook — the fat quantity and the chop thickness.
- One ounce of butter is not enoughAn ounce of clarified butter in a sautépan will be absorbed by the first two chops and the rest will scorch dry. Work in batches with 3-4 tablespoons of clarified butter or ghee at a time, adding more as it disappears; a neutral oil cut with butter behaves the same and browns more evenly.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is sheep over about two years old — stronger, denser, and hard to buy outside halal butchers and some farm suppliers. Loin or rib lamb chops substitute directly, but they are milder and cook faster, so watch the timing rather than the clock.
- "Pare nicely"Trim the fat cap down to a thin rim, scrape the last inch of rib bone clean if they are rib chops, and cut away the flap of meat at the tail end or fold it under and secure with a toothpick. A ragged chop breads badly.
- Four minutes a side, and how thickThat timing suits a chop about three-quarters of an inch thick over medium heat. A genuinely "thick" chop of an inch and a half will burn its crust before the centre is done — brown both sides in the pan, then finish it in a 375F oven until the interior reads 135-140F for pink lamb, higher for mutton, which is better cooked a little further.
- The saltA full tablespoon for eight chops is heavy by current taste, and the crumb coat holds seasoning against the meat rather than letting it fall away. Half that is plenty; season the meat, not the crumbs.
- Breading that stays onPat the chops dry before the egg, press the sifted crumbs on firmly, and let the breaded chops rest ten to fifteen minutes on a rack before they go into the fat. Damp meat and a hurried coat are the two reasons breading slides off in the pan.
- Half a pint of sauceOne cup. A tomato sauce, sauce Robert, or a reduced brown sauce would all suit; keep it off the crust and pool it under or beside the chops.
- YieldEight chops serves four as a main course, or eight as one course of a longer menu.
Oscar Tschirky's book records the working repertoire of a large hotel kitchen around 1896, and this entry reads like a line cook's note rather than a domestic recipe — quantities for eight, no oven, no garnish specified, just "any sauce or garnishing required." That last phrase is the whole point of the dish: a breaded sauté was a neutral base that could be sent out a dozen different ways depending on what sauce the menu called for, in the manner of the French côtelette panée. Mutton, rather than lamb, was the ordinary sheep meat of nineteenth-century American and British tables; lamb's near-total displacement of it in English-speaking markets came later, and modern readers who find old mutton recipes strong-flavoured are meeting an animal that most butchers no longer sell.