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January 13
Menu: Oysters on Half Shell; Radishes; Pickled Pears; Mutton Cutlets; Potato Balls; Chestnut Puree; Lettuce, French Dressing; Pineapple Bavarian Cream; Cakes; Coffee Mutton Cutlets-Slit 1 pound chestnuts, place in hot oven to loosen skins, shell and take off inner skin. Place in saucepan with gravy to cover and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Boil until tender, then drain and rub through sieve. Chop fine 2 slices ham, add 2 tablespoons Crisco with 1/4, pound chestnut puree, season with salt, pepper and red pepper. Add 1 egg yolk and mix. Trim 8 cutlets, make 1/4 cup Crisco hot in frying pan, cook cutlets 1 minute on right side only, then arrange them flat on dish, cover with another with weight on top, leave until cold. Spread puree over cooked side of cutlets, brush with beaten egg and cover with breadcrumbs. Fry on both sides, and place in oven 5 minutes. Dish in circle on mashed potatoes; fill center with fried potato balls and sprinkle with chopped parsley. Serve with gravy.
A two-stage chop: seared on one side, pressed cold, then masked with a chestnut-and-ham forcemeat, crumbed and fried. The pressing step is what makes it work, and it cannot be rushed.
- The hinge: sear one side, then press coldCooking the cutlets on one side only leaves the other face flat, moist and slightly tacky, which is what the puree grips. Press them under a plate and a weight until fully cold — an hour in the refrigerator is fine. Warm cutlets will shed the coating in the pan.
- Mutton vs. lambMutton is sheep over a year old, stronger in flavor and firmer; almost no US market carries it. Eight lamb rib or loin chops, about 1 inch thick, are the practical substitute, and they need less time in the final oven since they cook faster.
- Crisco and substitutionsCrisco here is plain vegetable shortening, the book's reason for existing. Butter, or a neutral oil for the frying, will do the job, though butter browns faster at frying heat and needs watching; in the forcemeat, softened butter gives a better set when chilled.
- Peeling the chestnutsCut an X in the flat side of each nut before they go into a hot oven, 400F, for 15 to 20 minutes. Peel while still hot — both the shell and the papery inner skin come away easily then and stubbornly once cool.
- "Gravy to cover"In this period gravy often meant plain meat stock rather than a thickened sauce. Simmer the chestnuts in beef or lamb stock, 25 to 35 minutes, until a knife goes through without resistance, then sieve or rice them.
- You will have puree left overA pound of unshelled chestnuts yields roughly 12 oz peeled and rather less as puree; only 1/4 pound goes into the forcemeat. The remainder keeps several days refrigerated and is good thinned with stock as a soup.
- Seasonings"Red pepper" means cayenne — a pinch. The two slices of ham are already salty, so salt the forcemeat after tasting, not before.
- Final oven and yieldFive minutes in a hot oven sets the crust and finishes the interior; the book gives no temperature for this step — go to 145F at the center for lamb. Eight cutlets serve four. The fried potato balls are pommes noisette — small scooped spheres of potato fried until golden.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was published by Procter & Gamble two years after Crisco itself appeared, and its recipes were keyed to dates across the year in a dinner-calendar arrangement — this one to January 14, when stored chestnuts were still to hand. The dish is a domesticated version of a French restaurant technique: chops seared on one face, chilled flat, masked with a stiff forcemeat, then crumbed and fried, a method generally associated with côtelettes à la Maintenon, where the mask is usually a thick onion soubise rather than chestnut. Substituting chestnut puree and chopped ham is a thrifty, seasonal turn, and the whole elaborate construction — mashed potato ring, noisette potatoes in the center, parsley over the top — shows what a Progressive-era American cookbook thought a Tuesday dinner should look like when it was trying to persuade cooks that a new hydrogenated cottonseed shortening belonged in ambitious cooking, not just in pie crust.