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Lamb Chops, Reforme
Trim and neatly flatten six French lamb chops. Season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, lightly roll in flour, then in beaten egg, and afterward gently roll in one ounce finely grated, lean ham. Heat one and a half tablespoons butter in a large frying pan, place the chops in the pan, one beside another, and slowly fry for seven minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, one overlapping another, crownlike, adjust a fancy paper frill at the end bone of each chop and keep warm.
Cut into julienne strips two vinegar gherkins, one small truffle, the white of a hard-boiled egg, six heads canned mushrooms and half ounce of cooked, smoked beef tongue. Place all these articles in a small saucepan with a tablespoon sherry, one and a half gills demi-glace; lightly mix with a wooden spoon, then let boil for five minutes. Pour the sauce in the centre of the chops and serve.
A late-Victorian club dish in miniature: a ham-crumbed cutlet with a garnish of julienned oddments bound in brown sauce. Most of the work is in the mise en place, and the one thing that will spoil it is the frying time.
- Seven minutes a side is too longSeven minutes a side is long for a modern chop -- a frenched lamb rib chop is an inch or less at the eye and will be grey and dry after fourteen minutes in a pan. Three to four minutes a side over medium heat, to an internal 130-135F for pink, is closer to the equivalent; the crust needs colour, not time.
- SaltspoonA quarter teaspoon. Two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon, which is assertive but correct for a dish where the coating carries the seasoning.
- GillHalf a cup. One and a half gills of demi-glace is therefore three-quarters of a cup, enough to bind the garnish rather than flood the plate.
- French lamb chopsRib chops with the bone scraped clean, sold as frenched racks or cut singly. "Neatly flatten" means a light tap with the flat of a cleaver to even the eye, not pounding it thin.
- Demi-glaceTraditionally a house sauce made by reducing espagnole with brown stock over a long simmer. Good commercial demi-glace concentrate or a reduced brown veal stock, thickened slightly, will do; a stock cube dissolved in water will not, since the sauce has nothing else to hide behind.
- The coatingGrated lean ham stands in for the more usual mixture of ham and breadcrumbs. One ounce over six chops is a thin veil, so grate it very fine on a rasp and press it on firmly, and let the coated chops rest ten minutes in the refrigerator so it stays put in the pan.
- Truffle and mushrooms"Six heads canned mushrooms" means six whole button caps from a tin, drained; fresh sauteed buttons are better. A fresh black truffle is a considerable expense for a garnish measured in threads. Omitting it costs the dish less than a truffle-oil substitute would.
- YieldSix rib chops feeds two generously or three at a table with other courses. The paper frills are optional and purely for the parade of it.
The name is a club name. Sauce Réforme and the cutlets that go with it are generally traced to Alexis Soyer, chef of the Reform Club in Pall Mall from 1837, and the original was mutton cutlets crumbed with ham and breadcrumbs and served with a sharp brown sauce cut with redcurrant jelly and vinegar, garnished with julienned tongue, gherkin, truffle, mushroom and egg white. That fine shredded garnish is the signature: it is the sauce, not the meat, that makes a dish réforme, and the version here has kept the garnish and quietly dropped the jelly and vinegar in favour of sherry and plain demi-glace. The paper frill on the bone belongs to the same world of dining-room display.