No. 1591

Mutton Chops Soyer

Cotelettes de Mouton Soyer

Soyer chops are cut from the saddle dividing it into one and a half inch thick slices cut the full width of the saddle; they should each weigh twelve ounces after being pared and are to be cooked for twelve minutes; when they are done they can be split through the center so that one chop will answer for two persons; serve them very hot with a half-glaze sauce (No. 413) into which Worcestershire sauce has been added, and buttered at the last moment, with the addition of fine raw herbs and nonpareil capers.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes you know how to cook a chop and tells you only what makes this one particular: it is cut across the whole saddle, so it is really two loin chops joined at the backbone. Everything else follows from its size.

What a saddle chop isThe saddle is the unsplit loin, both sides still attached to the spine. Cut across at 1.5 inches you get what butchers now call a Barnsley or double loin chop. Any butcher who breaks down whole lambs can cut it; ask for the saddle undivided and specify the thickness.
Mutton, not lambMutton is sheep over about two years, darker, firmer and considerably stronger in flavour. It is sold in Britain and by halal and specialist butchers but is uncommon in American supermarkets. A double loin chop from a mature lamb or hogget is the nearest ordinary substitute and will cook slightly faster.
The weightTwelve ounces trimmed is a heavy chop, and the twelve-minute timing is built around that mass and the inch-and-a-half thickness. A smaller or thinner double chop will be done sooner, so start checking well before twelve minutes. Judge by an instant-read thermometer at the thickest point beside the bone rather than by the clock.
Cooking methodRanhofer does not name one. Chops of this kind were ordinarily broiled or grilled, and high direct heat turned once is what a twelve-minute timing implies; twelve minutes in a pan over low heat will give a grey chop.
DonenessMutton at this thickness is best taken to about 130-135F for medium rare and rested five minutes, which will carry it a few degrees higher. Well-done mutton at 12 ounces becomes dry and assertively muttony.
Half-glaze sauceNo. 413 is demi-glace: brown stock and espagnole reduced together to a glossy, lightly bodied sauce. A good reduced veal or lamb stock stands in. Add the Worcestershire off the boil.
Buttering at the last momentThis is monter au beurre: cold butter whisked into the sauce off the heat, which thickens and glosses it. If the sauce boils after the butter goes in it will break and turn oily.
Fine raw herbs and nonpareil capersFines herbes means chopped parsley, chervil, chives and tarragon, added uncooked so they stay green. Nonpareils are the smallest grade of caper, about 7mm; rinse brined capers before use.
ServingOne chop split down the backbone gives two portions, so figure one chop per two diners. Split it after resting, not before, or the cut faces will bleed out onto the plate.

A Little History

The chop carries the name of Alexis Soyer (1810-1858), the French-born chef of London's Reform Club, who was probably the most publicly famous cook of the mid-nineteenth century: author of popular cookery books, inventor of a portable field stove, and organiser of soup kitchens during the Irish famine before he went out to reform army catering in the Crimea. The double saddle chop is generally attributed to him, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented, and much the same cut is known in England as the Barnsley chop. That Charles Ranhofer still lists it in The Epicurean (1894), decades after Soyer's death and an ocean away at Delmonico's in New York, says something about how far his reputation travelled. It also says something about the period's appetite for mutton, a meat then eaten far more widely than lamb, and about the era's fondness for Worcestershire sauce, which by the 1890s had worked its way from a Victorian novelty into the classical French sauce repertoire even in a kitchen as formal as this one.