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Mutton Chops, Anchovy Butter
Neatly trim and lightly flatten six French mutton chops. Mix on plate a tablespoon oil, teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, repeatedly turn chops in it, place on a broiler, broil for four minutes on each side and dress on a hot dish. Spread a little anchovy butter over chops, adjust a curled paper at end bone of each chop and serve.
A four-line recipe that assumes several things a modern cook no longer has: mutton, a coal gridiron, and a jar of anchovy butter already made up.
- "French" chopsThese are rib chops with the meat and fat scraped from the last inch or two of bone so the bone can be gripped or dressed with a paper frill. Any butcher will french a rack for you; from a whole rack, cut between each rib.
- Mutton vs. lambMutton is sheep over a year old, with darker meat and a much stronger flavour, and it is scarce outside halal and specialty butchers. Lamb rib chops substitute directly and need the same handling, though the anchovy will read as more assertive against their milder taste.
- "Broiler" means a gridironIn this period that is a hinged wire grid held over coals, so the chops cook from both sides in turn at high, dry, direct heat. A charcoal or gas grill run hot is the closest match; an overhead oven broiler works but wants the rack high and the pan preheated.
- Anchovy butterNot a shop item here. Mash 4-6 oil-packed anchovy fillets, or a teaspoon of anchovy paste, into 4 tablespoons of softened butter with a little lemon juice, then chill until firm enough to slice. It is salty, so go carefully with the teaspoon of salt in the marinade.
- TimingFour minutes a side suits a chop about three-quarters of an inch thick, cooked to medium-rare or medium. Thicker rib chops from a modern rack often run an inch or more and want five to six minutes a side; check for 130-135F at the centre rather than trusting the clock.
- Lightly flattenA single firm press with the flat of a cleaver or the heel of the hand evens the thickness so the chop cooks through at one rate. Pounding it thin defeats the purpose of a rib chop.
- The paper frills"A curled paper" is a cutlet frill, a fringed paper cuff slipped over the bared bone. Purely decorative, and only workable if the bone was properly frenched and stays clean of fat.
- YieldSix chops serve three as a main course, or six as part of a longer menu of the kind this book assumes. Serve on a genuinely hot dish; the butter should melt on contact, not sit in a pale disc.
Anchovy butter belongs to the family of compound butters that late-Victorian and Edwardian cookery leaned on constantly: butter worked with anchovy, maitre d'hotel butter with parsley and lemon, ravigote with herbs. They gave a grilled chop or steak a sauce without a stockpot, which mattered in kitchens where the grill and the sauce cook might be the same overworked person. Anchovy in particular had long standing in British cooking as a savoury note in everything from Worcestershire-style sauces to potted meats, and it pairs well with the strong flavour of mutton. That mutton, not lamb, is specified is itself a marker of date: sheep were commonly kept longer for wool and grazing, and mutton chops were an unremarkable chophouse and club dinner well into the twentieth century before the trade shifted almost entirely to young lamb. The paper frill on the bone is the same period's habit of dressing plain food for the table.