No. 1680

Lamb Cutlets a la Minute, with Mushrooms, Sauted

Cotelettes d'Agneau Sautés a la Minute aux Champignons

Pare a dozen lamb cutlets; season, then cook over a brisk fire in a sautoir with clarified butter, turning them round when a fine color on one side; brown both sides alike and cook them till done, then drain off the butter and baste them with a little melted light meat glaze (No. 402) and Madeira, reduce on a quick fire to dry the meat on both sides. Lay the cutlets on a dish, trim the handles with a frill (No. 10) and dress them crown-shaped, have Madeira sauce (No. 492), add to it some minced mushrooms, and pour the whole into the center of the crown or else in a croustade.

← No. 1679 Lamb Cutlets a la Maison d'Or Lamb No. 1681 Lamb Cutlets, Murillo →

For the Modern Kitchen

A straightforward sauté that depends almost entirely on heat management and on two components Ranhofer assumes you already have on hand: meat glaze and Madeira sauce. Everything else is trimming.

The hinge: glaze late, and let it dryThe cutlets are cooked through first, the fat poured off, and only then are they basted with glaze and Madeira and reduced until the surface is tacky rather than wet. Add the liquid too early and the cutlets stew in it; the aim is a lacquered exterior, which takes under a minute over high heat.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, roughly what we would call a sauté pan. Any heavy skillet wide enough to hold the cutlets without crowding will do — crowding is what turns this into a braise.
Clarified butterUsed because whole butter's milk solids burn at the heat this dish needs. Clarify your own by melting unsalted butter, skimming, and pouring off the clear fat, or substitute ghee.
Meat glaze (No. 402)Glace de viande: brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. "Light" here most likely means a paler veal- or poultry-based glaze rather than a dark one. Commercial demi-glace or a reduced veal stock stands in; a bouillon cube does not, being mostly salt.
Madeira sauce (No. 492)In The Epicurean this is espagnole or demi-glace finished with Madeira. If you are not building it from the book, reduce good stock with Madeira and mount with butter. Use Sercial or Verdelho — the cream-sherry-style supermarket "Madeira wine" is too sweet.
DonenessRanhofer says only "cook them till done," and gives no temperature. Rib or loin cutlets an inch thick reach a modern medium-rare at about 130-135F at the center, very roughly three to four minutes a side; note that the recipe glazes them straight in the pan rather than resting them first.
Frills and croustadeThe paper frill (No. 10) slips over the cleaned rib bone and is purely decorative; skip it without loss. A croustade is a hollowed, fried or baked bread or pastry case to hold the mushroom sauce — a shallow puff-pastry shell serves.
MushroomsMinced button mushrooms added raw to the sauce will thin it with their water. Sweat them in butter first until the moisture has gone, then fold them in.
YieldThe recipe specifies a dozen cutlets, which would serve roughly four as a main course, or six as one course of a longer menu.

A Little History

À la minute is exactly what it says: a dish put together to order in the few minutes between the ticket arriving and the plate going out, as against the braises and galantines built hours or days ahead. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York across two spells in the second half of the nineteenth century, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a working record of that kitchen, and the cross-references to numbered stocks, glazes and sauces are the tell — a brigade kept glace de viande and Madeira sauce standing, so a cutlet order became a sauté, a splash, and a swirl of the pan. The crown arrangement, with the trimmed bones standing outward around a central sauce or garnish, was a common nineteenth-century way to present cutlets and survives today mainly in the crown roast.