No. 1676

Lamb Cutlets, Giralda

Cotelettes d'Agneau a la Giralda

First sauté ten fine cutlets, then set them under a weight and pare them when cold. Cut some sweet Spanish onions into three-sixteenth of an inch square pieces, blanch and cook them in butter, not allowing them to attain color, then add the same quantity of cooked sweet Spanish peppers and thicken the whole with a well-seasoned and reduced veloute (No. 415), allow it to cool, mask the cutlets with this preparation, smooth nicely dome-shaped and cover over with a well-reduced allemande sauce (No. 407); bestrew grated parmesan over and brown in the oven. Pour a supreme sauce (No. 547), finished with shrimp butter (No. 587) in the bottom of the dish, garnish the cutlet handles with frills (No. 10) and range them on top of the sauce.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's chaud-froid construction: the cutlets are cooked, chilled, coated, gratinéed, and served on a shrimp-butter sauce. Nearly all the work is in the sauces, which Ranhofer expects you to have on hand by number.

The hinge: cook the cutlets rareThe hinge: don't cook the cutlets through — They are sautéed, cooled, then browned again under high heat, so it makes sense to stop the first cooking short of done. Cutlets cooked through at the sauté stage will be grey and dry by the time the parmesan colors.
Pressing under a weightChilling the sautéed cutlets under a weight keeps them flat and firm so the paring knife can trim a clean, even shape that will hold the dome of filling. The recipe says only to pare them when cold; a few hours' chilling will do it.
The numbered saucesVelouté (No. 415) is a white stock thickened with blond roux; allemande (No. 407) is velouté finished with egg yolk and cream, which helps it glaze under heat; suprême (No. 547) is chicken velouté enriched with cream. Shrimp butter (No. 587) is shrimp shells and trimmings pounded with butter, then strained. A modern kitchen can build the three sauces from one batch of velouté.
Sweet Spanish peppersThese are pimientos — thick-fleshed, mild red peppers, sold today jarred and roasted. Drain and pat them dry before dicing or the filling will loosen.
Dice sizeThree-sixteenths of an inch is roughly 5 mm, a large brunoise. Cut it accurately; the coating is masked smooth and dome-shaped, and coarse dice will show through.
Blanching the onionBlanching before the butter stew takes off the sulfurous edge and helps keep the onion pale. Keep the pan on low with a lid and a piece of parchment.
BrowningThe recipe says to brown it in the oven; a broiler on high, close to the element, for two or three minutes will do the same job — long enough to color the parmesan and no longer. The interior only needs to come warm.
FrillsThe paper frills (No. 10) on the exposed rib bones are decorative and optional; they were a common finish on cutlets served this way.
YieldTen cutlets would serve five as a main course, or ten as one course of a longer dinner; the recipe itself gives no yield.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and this dish shows the house style at full stretch: a simple lamb chop turned into a composed, gratinéed, sauce-bedded plate whose actual work lies in four cross-referenced preparations. The name follows the period convention of borrowing a place or a person for a garnish — Giralda is the bell tower of Seville cathedral, and the Spanish onions and sweet Spanish peppers in the coating are the reason for it, in the same way a garnish called "à l'espagnole" or "à la portugaise" signaled peppers and tomato. Ranhofer rarely explained his titles, so the connection is inferred from the ingredients rather than documented. The technique of masking cold cooked meat with a stiff, cooled sauce, then glazing it, was one of the great show pieces of nineteenth-century restaurant cooking, and it depended on a brigade that already had velouté, allemande, suprême and a compound shellfish butter standing ready — which is precisely why the recipe reads as a list of numbers.