No. 1690

Lamb Cutlets Breaded, Sauted and Broiled

Cotelettes d'Agneau Panees Sautees ou Grillees

Sauted.—Pare ten lamb cutlets into good shape, flatten, season and dip them in beaten eggs to roll after in bread-crumbs; smooth the surfaces with the blade of a knife and then put them in a sautoir with hot purified butter (No. 16), cook on both sides turning them over only once, drain and trim with fancy frills (No. 10), dress on a very hot dish and serve.

Broiled.—Bread-crumb the cutlets the same as when sautéing them; eight minutes before serving, roll them in melted butter, broil over a slow fire turning them on both sides; take them off when done and lay them on a plate, trim with fancy frills, then dress them in a circle on a very hot dish pouring a little clear gravy (No. 404) into the bottom.

← No. 1689 Lamb Cutlets a la Victor Hugo Lamb No. 1691 Lamb Cutlets in Crepinette →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a cook who already has clarified butter and brown gravy standing by, and who reads cross-references as a matter of course. Two methods sit in one entry: pan-fried in butter, or crumbed and broiled.

The hinge: crumbs before heatBreadcrumbs scorch long before a chop cooks through, so the fat must be hot enough to set the coating but not fierce. Turn once only, as written — repeated flipping tears the crust off.
Purified butterHis No. 16 is clarified butter, milk solids skimmed and the clear fat poured off. Ordinary butter blackens at the temperature this needs; use clarified butter or half butter and half neutral oil.
SautoirA straight-sided sauté pan, not a sloped skillet. It holds enough fat to come part-way up the cutlets and keeps the crumb from flying about.
Clear gravyNo. 404 is a clear, strained and degreased brown gravy, not a thickened flour gravy. A few tablespoons of well-reduced brown stock in the bottom of the hot platter does the same job.
Fancy frillsNo. 10 is the paper cutlet frill slipped over the exposed rib bone. Purely decorative; skip it without loss, though it does keep fingers clean if the chops are eaten by hand.
Broiling heat and time"A slow fire" means moderate embers; a medium broiler or grill is the modern equivalent, with the cutlets far enough from the heat that the crumbs do not scorch before the meat is done. Eight minutes total for a trimmed rib cutlet lands around medium-rare, an internal 130 to 135F; thicker loin chops need longer.
FlatteningThe recipe says only to flatten; pound to an even thickness so the chop cooks through in the short window the crumb coating allows. Uneven cutlets give you a burnt crust at the thin end.
YieldThe recipe gives no serving count. Ten rib cutlets would plausibly serve four or five as a main course, or more in a longer menu of the kind this book was written for.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer published The Epicurean in 1894 after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the numbered cross-references are the book's signature: it functions less as a domestic cookbook than as the working system of a professional brigade, where clarified butter, brown gravy and paper frills were all standing preparations kept ready in the kitchen. Crumbed lamb cutlets are a plain item in that system — the French panée treatment applied to the rib chops trimmed out of a rack, with the bone scraped clean so a frill could be fitted, a presentation convention generally traced to nineteenth-century French service and still visible on the crown roast. The same entry offers both a sauté and a broil, so either route could be taken from the identical mise en place.