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Lamb Chops with Bacon
Trim and nicely flatten six tender French lamb chops. Season them evenly with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper. Arrange them on the broiler and broil on a brisk fire for four minutes on each side. Dress on a hot dish. Place a nice slice of freshly prepared bacon on each chop and serve.
A four-line chophouse recipe that assumes a coal-fired grill and a cook who already knows what a French chop is. The only real decisions are thickness and doneness.
- "French" lamb chopsRib chops with the meat and fat scraped from the end of the bone, what a butcher today calls frenched. Ask for single rib chops rather than a rack; the loin chop is a different cut, and as it is usually cut thicker it will need longer.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons is half a teaspoon of white pepper against half a teaspoon of salt. That is a peppery ratio by modern taste; a quarter teaspoon of pepper may suit better.
- "Nicely flatten"A light press with the flat of a cleaver or the heel of the hand to even the thickness, not a pounding. The point is uniform cooking, not tenderising.
- A brisk fireIn 1906 this meant a bed of coals hot enough to sear on contact. Under a modern broiler, run it at full heat with the rack set two to three inches from the element, or use a grill pan preheated until it smokes.
- Four minutes a sideThat figure fits a chop of about three quarters of an inch. Thicker chops need longer, and the reliable test is an instant-read thermometer: 130-135F for medium rare, which is where lamb rib is at its best. Pull them a few degrees short and rest three or four minutes.
- "Freshly prepared bacon"Streaky bacon cooked separately just before serving, drained and still hot. Cook it while the chops rest rather than in advance, since the whole effect depends on it being crisp when it reaches the plate.
- The hot dishWarming the serving platter is not decoration here. Lamb fat congeals quickly and a cold plate dulls both the chop and the bacon within a minute.
- YieldSix chops serves three as a main course, or six as part of a longer menu of the kind this book assumes.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book, compiled by a man long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and the terseness is characteristic: the book was aimed at people who could already cook and wanted a large reference repertoire rather than instruction. The French rib chop, trimmed clean at the bone so it could be picked up or dressed with a paper frill, was a fixture of American hotel and restaurant menus at the turn of the century, and pairing it with bacon reflects the period habit of laying a salty, smoky garnish over plainly grilled meat, much as bacon was served with liver, calf's kidney and small game birds. The instruction to broil over a brisk fire suggests a coal or charcoal broiler in constant use rather than a gas range switched on for a single dish.