No. 1602

Mutton Cutlets with Chiccory, Truffles or Fried Potatoes

Cotelettes de Mouton a la Chicoree, aux Truffes ou aux Pommes Frites

With Chiccory.—Dress them in a circle when prepared the same as for the marinade (No. 1604), fill the empty space with a chiccory garnishing (No. 2729), serving a half-glaze sauce (No. 413) separately.

With Truffles.—Prepare, cook, and dress the cutlets the same as for the above; fill the inside of the circle with finely shredded truffles added to a half-glaze sauce (No. 413) and Madeira wine.

With Fried Potatoes.—After they are prepared, cooked, dressed, and glazed, fill in the inside of the circle with half inch balls of potatoes sauted in butter, and seasoned with salt, parsley, and lemon juice.

← No. 1601 Mutton Cutlets with Braised Lettuce Mutton No. 1603 Mutton Cutlets with Cucumbers →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is one of Ranhofer's shorthand entries: three garnishes hung on a single method that lives elsewhere in the book. Read it as an assembly plan rather than a recipe, and settle the cutlets and the sauce before you think about the garnish.

The cross-references come firstNothing here can be cooked until you have No. 1604 (the cutlet preparation the text calls "the marinade"), No. 2729 for the chiccory garnish, and No. 413 (half-glaze, that is, demi-glace). Without a stock-based sauce already made this is effectively a two-day dish; a good reduced veal or lamb stock, glossy and lightly thickened, is the usual modern substitute.
"Dress them in a circle"The cutlets are presumably stood on a round platter, bones outward and meat overlapping, leaving a well in the centre for the garnish; Ranhofer does not describe the arrangement beyond "in a circle." It is a serving instruction, not a cooking one, and each version here calls for a garnish that mounds.
MuttonRanhofer meant meat from a mature sheep, conventionally over two years old (definitions vary, with hogget covering roughly one to two years), strong-flavoured and fatty. American markets rarely carry it now. Rib or loin chops from lamb, or hogget if a butcher can get it, behave the same way in the pan but taste milder and cook faster.
DonenessThese are thin single-bone cutlets. Broiled or pan-seared to 130-135F internal and rested, they stay pink; another two minutes and they are grey and dry. The marinade of No. 1604 does nothing to protect them from overcooking.
ChiccoryIn an 1894 American kitchen this is most likely the curly endive sold today as frisée, braised soft rather than served raw; the garnish itself is specified at No. 2729. Belgian endive, which the word now often means, will also work but gives a sweeter, wetter garnish.
Truffles and MadeiraThe truffle version wants fresh black truffle shredded into the demi-glace off the heat, with the Madeira reduced separately first so its raw alcohol cooks off. Preserved truffle peelings and their juice are the honest economical substitute; truffle oil is not.
The potato ballsHalf-inch balls cut with a melon baller, sautéed in butter until golden — pommes noisette. Parboiling them briefly first keeps the centres from staying raw while the outsides colour, and the parsley and lemon juice go on at the last second, off the heat.
GlazingIn the fried-potato version it is the cutlets, not the potatoes, that are "glazed": brushed with reduced glace de viande for shine, a step that adds gloss and salt rather than cooking.
YieldRanhofer gives none. Figure three cutlets a person for a course, so nine to twelve for a small dinner, with roughly a cup of sauce.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its structure explains this entry's brevity: with well over three thousand numbered items, garnishes, sauces and base preparations are written once and then called by number, exactly as a kitchen brigade would call them. The three variants here are textbook grande cuisine practice — a rotating garnish that gives the dish its name, which is how a menu could offer apparent variety from a single day's mise en place. Mutton, rather than lamb, is often said to have been the more common sheep meat on nineteenth-century American tables, strong enough to stand up to demi-glace and Madeira; its near-disappearance from the market is probably part of the reason a dish like this reads as unfamiliar now.