No. 1601

Mutton Cutlets with Braised Lettuce

Cotelettes de Mouton aux Laitues Braisees

Pare the cutlets as indicated for plain (No. 1590), larding them with medium lardons (No. 2, Fig. 52). Butter the bottom of a sautoir, and cover it with slices of fat pork, slices of veal, carrots, onions a bunch of parsley garnished with thyme and bay leaf, and a few cloves; lay in the cutlets and moisten to half their height with a mirepoix stock (No. 419), then cover over with buttered paper, let cook to reduce in the oven, being careful to baste frequently, and to add more liquid as quickly as it evaporates, they will take about two hours. Have some lettuce blanched and braised (No. 2754); when done and well drained, dress them in the center of a dish placing the cutlets around after glazing them and trimming the handles with paper frills (No. 10). Strain, remove the fat from the stock and reduce with a little brown sauce (No. 414) and whit wine; pass through a tammy and pour a part of it over the meat serving the remainder in a sauce-boat with the cutlets.

← No. 1600 Mutton Cutlets, Russian Style with Horseradi Mutton No. 1602 Mutton Cutlets with Chiccory, Truffles or Fr →

For the Modern Kitchen

A classic French braise dressed as a plated centerpiece: chops cooked slowly in a covered pan with aromatics until the liquid has all but disappeared, then glazed and set around a mound of braised lettuce. The hinge is the moistening — half height only, replenished as it goes, so the cutlets braise and glaze rather than boil.

Sautoir and cartoucheA sautoir is a straight-sided sauté pan; any wide, heavy pan with a lid will do. The buttered paper laid directly on the meat is a cartouche — cut a round of parchment to fit inside the rim so it rests on the cutlets, which lets steam escape slowly while the surfaces baste.
Oven heatRanhofer gives none. A braise reduced over two hours wants 300–325°F. Anything hotter drives off the liquid faster than you can replace it and scorches the vegetable bed.
LardingMedium lardons drawn through the meat with a larding needle. Mutton from a mature sheep is lean and dry in the loin; larding is what keeps it succulent over two hours. If you skip it, choose a fattier cut rather than braising lean chops bare.
MuttonMutton means sheep over a year old, still sold by halal and specialty butchers and worth seeking out for its depth. Substituting lamb, use shoulder chops or thick-cut loin chops — thin supermarket lamb chops will be gray and stringy long before two hours are up.
Fat porkSlices of fresh pork fatback or unsmoked salt pork, laid down as a barrier so the meat does not catch. Blanch salt pork briefly first or the finished sauce will be too salty once reduced.
Mirepoix stock, brown sauceNo. 419 is a stock made with the mirepoix vegetables and wine; a good brown veal or lamb stock stands in. No. 414 is Ranhofer's brown sauce, his espagnole; a modern demi-glace or a well-reduced brown stock serves. Both are there for body, so reduce them.
TammyA tammy cloth is a fine woolen straining cloth. A chinois lined with a double layer of cheesecloth gives the same result: a sauce with no fibers or specks.
GlazingAfter the braise, spoon the reduced cooking liquid over the drained cutlets and return them briefly to a hot oven or under the broiler, repeating until they take on a lacquered shine. This is finishing, not cooking; a minute or two at a time.
Lettuce and frillsWhole heads of romaine or butter lettuce, blanched, refreshed, squeezed dry, folded and braised in stock. Paper frills are decorative only.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how thoroughly that kitchen worked in the French idiom — the number cross-references alone (a mirepoix stock here, an espagnole there, braised lettuce from the vegetable chapter) assume a brigade with those preparations already standing. Braising lettuce strikes modern cooks as odd, but it was standard in nineteenth-century French cookery, where the head was blanched to take out bitterness and then stewed in stock as a soft, faintly sweet foil to strong meat. Mutton was ordinary eating then and is largely gone from American butchers now, a shift generally traced to the collapse of domestic wool flocks and to postwar preference for the milder flavor of young lamb. The paper frills on the bones are a reminder that this was food meant to be looked at before it was eaten.