No. 1778

Pork Cutlets and Chops, Plain and Castillane-Broiled

Cotelettes de Porc Grillees Nature a la Castillane et Cotelettes de Filet

Certainly the best way to prepare pork cutlets is to broil them; when fried they lose their finest qualities. From a small rack cut off six cutlets beat, pare, season and roll them in a little oil, then broil over a good fire for twelve to fourteen minutes, being careful to turn them; trim the handles with paper frills (No. 10), and dress on a very hot dish.

Castillane.—After the cutlets have been prepared and cooked as for the above, dress them on a hot dish and serve with a sauce-boatful of Castillane sauce (No. 443). Prepare chops the same as cutlets, they should be cut from a loin instead of from the rack.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's instruction is essentially a technique note: broil, never fry. The only real translation work is in the cuts, the cross-referenced sauce, and the cooking time, which was written for pork that everyone assumed had to be cooked through.

Rack vs. loinA "rack" here is the rib section, so his cutlets are what a butcher now calls rib chops, bone in, with the rib left long enough to dress. Chops, he says, come from the loin — loin chops, with the T-shaped bone. Ask for them cut a good inch thick; anything thinner will dry out on a broiler.
"Beat, pare, season"Flatten the meat lightly with the side of a cleaver, trim the fat cap to a thin even layer, scrape the rib bone clean for the frill, then salt and pepper. The oil is a film to prevent sticking and to carry the seasoning, not a marinade.
"A good fire"Live coals burned down to a steady glow rather than open flame — a hot but not blazing grill, or a broiler element with the rack set about four inches down. Pork fat drips and flares, so keep a cooler zone to move the cutlets to.
Twelve to fourteen minutesThat was written for pork cooked hard, before trichinella was controlled in commercial herds. Modern whole-muscle pork is done at an internal 145F with a three-minute rest, which for a one-inch chop is closer to eight to ten minutes total over that heat. Judge by a thermometer in the thickest part, clear of the bone, rather than by the clock.
Paper frillsHis No. 10 is a cut-and-folded paper cuff slipped over the scraped rib bone. It is decoration only, and easily skipped; if you want it, the cuff goes on after cooking, never before.
Castillane sauce (No. 443)The recipe is a cross-reference to another entry in the same book, so the Castillane version is incomplete without it. Look up No. 443 for Ranhofer's own formula rather than substituting a guess.
YieldSix cutlets, so six servings as written in a multi-course menu, or three by present-day appetites. The sauce goes to the table separately in a boat, not over the meat.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summary of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organized less like a cookbook than like a professional reference: numbered recipes, constant cross-references, and terse entries that assume a brigade who already know how to butcher a rack. This entry is characteristic in that its real content is an opinion — broiling over coals preserves what frying destroys — followed by the minimum instruction needed to execute it and a pointer to a sauce elsewhere in the book. The long cooking time reflects the era's settled belief that pork must be cooked through, a caution generally traced to trichinosis, which remained a genuine hazard in nineteenth-century pork and is the reason American pork recipes ran well done for another century. The paper frill on the rib bone belongs to the same restaurant world: food that arrived at the table dressed, on a very hot dish, with the sauce passed separately so the kitchen's work stayed visible.