No. 1600

Mutton Cutlets, Russian Style with Horseradish

Cotelettes de Mouton a la Russe au Raifort

Have some well pared cutlets; lard them with cooked ham, then lay them in a sautoir with clarified butter, fry over a brisk fire, moistening with a little Madeira and meat glaze (No. 402). Pour some well reduced veloute (No. 415) into a saucepan, and add to it some freshly grated horseradish, thickening with a few egg-yolks, then put in the whites of the eggs beaten stiff; use this preparation to cover over the larded side of the cutlets; smooth them nicely with a knife, and bestrew with bread-crumbs fried in butter; pour melted butter over and brown in a hot oven, then serve after having trimmed the handles with paper frills and dressed the cutlets flat on a well acidulated Colbert sauce (No. 451), with minced cepes added.

← No. 1599 Mutton Cutlets Breaded with Puree of Truffle Mutton No. 1601 Mutton Cutlets with Braised Lettuce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with stocks and sauces already standing; the recipe is a set of assembly instructions resting on four cross-references. Here is what to have in place before you start.

The cross-referenced saucesVelouté (No. 415) is a white stock thickened with blond roux, reduced here until thick enough to hold on the cutlet. Meat glaze (No. 402) is veal or beef stock boiled down to a syrup — commercial demi-glace concentrate is the practical stand-in. Colbert sauce (No. 451) is broadly a meat-glaze sauce finished with butter, lemon and herbs; the "well acidulated" instruction suggests pushing the acid further than usual, since it has to cut through mutton fat and a rich egg coating.
"Well pared cutlets"Rib chops from the rack, the bone scraped bare an inch or two for the frill, most of the fat cap and all sinew removed. Six to eight chops serve four. Ask a butcher to French a rack rather than buying loose chops if you want uniform thickness.
Larding with hamCooked ham cut into matchsticks and threaded through the meat with a larding needle. Without the needle, cut narrow slits with a boning knife and push the strips in. Only one face is larded, because that face carries the horseradish coating.
Sautoir and brisk fireA sautoir is a straight-sided sauté pan. "Brisk" means high enough to colour the cutlets fast — two to three minutes a side for a chop of ordinary thickness, since they finish under heat again in the oven. The Madeira and glaze are added as moistening while the cutlets fry: small additions to glaze them, not enough liquid to stew the meat.
The soufflé coating is the hingeThe coating is the hinge -- Reduced velouté with grated horseradish, thickened with yolks, then lightened with stiff whites. Fold the whites in gently and spread immediately; if the mixture sits it slackens and will slide off the cutlet in the oven. Ranhofer adds the horseradish to the reduced velouté before the yolks; keep the sauce off the boil once it is in, since sustained heat drives off the volatile compounds that carry the flavour.
"A hot oven"Ranhofer gives no temperatures anywhere; a hot oven is conventionally taken as somewhere around 425–450F. Either way it needs only long enough to set and gild the crust — a few minutes. Longer and the coating dries and the mutton overcooks.
CèpesPorcini. Dried are fine: soak, squeeze, chop finely and sweat in butter before adding to the Colbert sauce, or the sauce will taste of soaking water.
Paper frillsPurely decorative cuffs of cut paper on the exposed bone. They are optional and were dining-room theatre, not cookery.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in print — some 3,500 numbered items, cross-linked so that a cook could follow a chain of references rather than repeat a stock recipe. The à la russe label here has little to do with any specific Russian dish; it was applied very loosely, though it is often said to point to sour cream, horseradish, or both, the flavours French cooks associated with the Russian table. Mutton — the meat of a mature sheep rather than a lamb — occupies a long section of the book, and this treatment shows how such a chapter was managed: a strong, fatty meat repeatedly paired with acid, and here also armoured in an egg-lightened coating so that a plain chop could arrive at the table looking like a made dish.