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Lamb Chops with Ham
Broil six thin slices ham for two minutes on each side, arrange on a hot dish and keep hot. Neatly flatten and lightly trim six French lamb chops, evenly season with a teaspoon salt and a half teaspoon pepper, broil them for three minutes on each side, remove, dress them over the slices of ham and serve.
A two-element dish that depends entirely on timing: the chops must come off while still pink, and the ham needs only warming through. Read the times as a guide to thickness rather than as fixed numbers.
- "French" lamb chopsThese are rib chops with the bone scraped clean. The recipe gives no thickness; the timings suit a chop of about 3/4 inch. A butcher will french a rack on request; a modern loin chop of the same thickness broils to the same schedule.
- Three minutes a sideThat works only for a chop about 3/4 inch thick under a fully preheated broiler set close to the element. A 1 1/4-inch chop wants 5 to 6 minutes a side. Cook to 130-135F at the bone for medium rare rather than by the clock.
- Broiling then, broiling nowThe original assumed a gridiron over live coals or a gas broiler with the food nearly touching the flame. Set an oven rack 3 to 4 inches below the element and let it heat 5 to 10 minutes before the meat goes in.
- The hamAlmost all ham sold now is fully cooked, so the two minutes a side is about colour and heat, not doneness. Slices around 1/4 inch thick brown without drying; paper-thin deli ham will curl and toughen.
- "Neatly flatten"A light press with the flat of a heavy knife or a mallet evens the thickness so the chop cooks through at one rate. Do not pound it thin, or the three-minute timing collapses.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt across six chops is right for unseasoned lamb, but cured ham brings its own salt. Season the lamb and leave the ham alone.
- Resting and servingGive the chops 3 to 4 minutes off the heat before they go over the ham, and pour any collected juices over the top. Serves six as written, one chop and one slice each; two apiece makes it a main course.
The pairing of lamb with a slice of cured pork underneath is often said to be a hotel-kitchen convention of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when a plain broiled chop was dressed up by setting it on something that added salt and fat or bacon, or a slice of fried bread. Filippini's International Cook Book (1906) belongs to the Delmonico's tradition, where the same base recipe reappears in a long series of variations under different names, each distinguished by a garnish or an accompaniment; "with ham" is one entry in that catalogue. The word "French" here refers to the trimming rather than the cuisine: scraping the rib bone bare, sometimes with a paper frill, was standard restaurant presentation of the period, and is generally explained as a way of letting the chop be picked up.<br><br>Note also how little the instructions explain. A cook using this book was expected to know what a hot broiler felt like and how a chop should give under the finger; the book supplies the assembly and the seasoning, and nothing else.</br></br>