No. 1604

Mutton Cutlets with Marinade

Cotelettes de Mouton a la Marinade

Select two racks of mutton having the meats tender and well matured, remove the remainder of the breast leaving the cutlet bones only four inches long, also remove the neck as far down as the third cutlet; saw off the spinal bone without injuring the fillet as far as the joints of the cutlets, then cut from each rack either five, six, or even seven cutlets according to the thickness of the meat, each one when pared ought to weigh four ounces. Pare the meat from the end of the bone, about one inch deep to make a handle, then flatten each cutlet lightly and suppress the fibrous skin on the fat, also the skin adhering to the inside of the bone; salt over and dip the cutlets in melted butter, and broil them on a bright fire, only turning them over once to have them retain their blood and be juicy. Glaze, garnish the handles with frills (No. 10), and dress; pour a little clear gravy (No. 404) into the bottom of the dish, and serve with a separate marinade sauce (No. 496).

← No. 1603 Mutton Cutlets with Cucumbers Mutton No. 1605 Double Baron or Saddle, Roasted →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer is writing for a brigade with a butcher's saw and a live charcoal fire, but the method reduces to a few decisions any cook can make. The hinge is the single turn: these are thick chops cooked hot and fast, and a rack rib chop cooked past medium loses everything the recipe is aiming at.

Mutton, and what to buy insteadMutton is meat from an adult sheep, usually over a year old and often older, with darker, stronger flesh; in the US it is sold mainly through halal and specialty butchers. A rack of lamb behaves much the same way in this recipe but is milder and cooks a little faster, so judge by internal temperature rather than the clock.
Let the butcher do the sawingThe instructions to remove the breast, take off the neck to the third rib, and saw the chine without cutting into the eye are a butcher's frenching job. Ask for a frenched rack with the chine removed and the bones cut to four inches; that is exactly what is described here.
Cutlet sizeEach pared cutlet is meant to weigh four ounces, with five to seven taken from a rack depending on how thick the meat is. Two racks yielding ten to fourteen cutlets serves five to seven people at two apiece.
"Broil on a bright fire"A clear, hot bed of coals or a very hot grill, not a lukewarm oven broiler. If working indoors, a heavy ridged pan preheated until it just smokes gives the same crust; the butter dip is there for browning and will scorch if the heat is uneven.
"Retain their blood"Period shorthand for rare to medium-rare, roughly 125-135F at the center. Turning once is the recipe's own device for keeping the cutlets juicy; four to five minutes a side suits a chop of about an inch over hot coals.
GlazeNot a sugar glaze. Glace de viande is stock reduced to a syrupy, gelatinous concentrate, brushed on hot meat for shine and savor. A tablespoon of commercial demi-glace or heavily reduced stock does the job.
The cross-referenced saucesNo. 404 is a clear gravy, poured as a thin film in the bottom of the platter rather than over the meat; No. 496 is the marinade sauce, a sharp vinegar-and-aromatic brown sauce of the piquante type. Both are given elsewhere in the book and worth looking up; failing that, a well-made sauce piquante with shallots, vinegar and chopped gherkins is a reasonable stand-in.
FrillsThe paper cuffs on the bone handles are called for by cross-reference (No. 10). They are decorative and also keep the fingers off the greasy bone; skip them without consequence, since the inch of pared bone still gives a clean handle.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked in some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like a working reference rather than a home cookbook: everything is numbered and cross-referenced, so a single dish pulls in a gravy, a sauce and a paper frill from three other pages. À la marinade here signals the accompanying vinegar-sharpened sauce rather than any soaking of the meat beforehand, the acid being a traditional foil to mutton's richness. Mutton was still eaten in America at this date and was well regarded in fine dining when properly hung and aged; Ranhofer's insistence on meat "well matured" reflects a period in which carcasses were commonly hung before sale. Its later near-disappearance from American tables is usually attributed to changes in wool-flock economics and to servicemen returning from the World Wars with a low opinion of boiled mutton.