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Lamb Chop Sautees, Minute
Neatly pare six tender, well-flattened lamb chops, season all around with half teaspoon salt and three saltspoons pepper. Heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in a sautoire, arrange chops in the pan one beside another, and briskly cook three minutes on each side. Remove and dress on a hot dish, alternately, with six heart-shaped croutons. Remove the butter from the pan and save it; thoroughly heat the sautoire, pour in half gill water, half gill demi-glace, juice of half a sound lemon and half a teaspoon chopped parsley, briskly stir at bottom and cook for four minutes. Pour it over the chops and serve.
A six-minute chop with a pan sauce built in four more. Everything depends on having the demi-glace ready before the chops go in.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons is about three-quarters of a teaspoon of pepper for six chops. That is a genuinely peppery seasoning; halve it if you want the lamb forward.
- Half a gillA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 1/4 cup. The sauce is 1/4 cup water plus 1/4 cup demi-glace, cooked hard for four minutes, by which time it will have reduced somewhat.
- SautoireA sautoire is a shallow straight-sided sauté pan, not a deep pot. Use the widest heavy skillet you have so six chops sit in one layer without touching; crowded chops steam instead of browning.
- Demi-glaceFilippini assumed a stockpot in the house. A good reduced brown veal or lamb stock is the substitute; commercial demi-glace concentrate works, but dilute it further than the label says or the 1/4 cup will overwhelm the lemon.
- Well-flattenedThe three-minutes-per-side timing assumes chops pounded thin, as the recipe directs. Thicker loin or rib chops at that heat are likely to be underdone at the bone; either flatten them as directed or extend the time and rest them.
- Pour off the butterThe recipe has you remove the butter and save it, so it is not wasted. Deglazing into a drained pan also keeps the finished sauce from turning greasy.
- CroutonsHeart-shaped croutons are slices of firm white bread cut with a cutter and fried in butter until crisp. Fry them first and keep them warm; they go soft the moment sauce touches them, so arrange them at the edge of the platter.
- YieldSix flattened chops serve three as a main course, or six as a first course. The sauce is scant by design — a spoonful over each chop, not a pool.
This is from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906), and it carries the fingerprints of his years as a chef at Delmonico's in New York: exact seasoning in salt- and teaspoons, a mother sauce assumed to be simmering somewhere, and croutons cut into hearts because the plate was expected to look composed. "Minute" in the title is kitchen shorthand for a dish cooked à la minute — to order, in the time it takes to seat the diner — and the same word survives in steak minute. The technique on show is a familiar one in professional cooking around 1900: sear in butter, pour off the fat, deglaze with liquid and demi-glace, sharpen with lemon and parsley. Filippini gives no garnish beyond the croutons, which may suggest the chops were one course among many rather than a plate meant to stand alone.