Baked Mutton Chops

Ingredients

• milk
• eggs
• flour
• beaten ginger
• the chops

Method

1. 1

   Season the chops with pepper and salt, place them in a buttered dish with milk, eggs, and flour, sprinkle beaten ginger over the mass, and bake in an oven.

Nutrition per serving

As published

This recipe was extracted from The thorough good cook (1895) by George Augustus Sala, page 42. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

the chop is placed upon it, and the fire should be a perfectly clear one. The chop or steak should be frequently turned while it is cooking; and if an excessive amount of fat falls into the fire, the blaze should be at once abated by a handful of salt. If these details are properly attended to, I fail to see where the contingency of smoke and soot occurs. The recipes for cooking plain mutton chops are curiously numerous ; and Dr. Kitchiner, in his " Cook's Oracle," tolerates 0£)th the broiling and frying of chops, giving, in the case of the grill, the sensible advice to the cook to set the gridiron slanting, to prevent the fat from dropping on the coals and so CHATS ABOUT COOKERY. 57 making a smoke. In a culinary manual, published less than twenty years ago, both the broiling and the frying of chops are prescribed. In the first instance, the cook is directed to brush the cutlet over lightly with claritied butter to preserve the juice. The chop is to be turned four times, and when half-done it is to be seasoned Avith a mixture of salt and j)epper. It is to be served on a hot dish with a thin slice of butter on the chop, and a tablespoonful of mushroom catsup or Chili vinegar ; and, finally, it jnay be gar- nished with sliced lemon. When chops are fried, they are not to be dressed au naturel, but are dipped in egg and bread-crumbs, and to the butter in the frying-pan must be added a small quantity of stock or grav}^ There is not much to be said against this mode of dressing chops, but most lovers of the delicacy would, we should say, regard the prescription of Chili vinegar in lieu of mushroom <?atsup as rank heresy ; and although the garnish of sliced lemon may look as pretty as a border of parsley to a dish of sandwiches, the lemon is clearly an impertinence. The chop, let me repeat, should be neatly trinmied, very thick, with a proper allowance of fat, and so cooked that in the centre of the chop there should be a stratum of under- done meat : a fount of natural gravy. As some epicures do not object to a little very finely minced .shallot being sprinkled over their chop, so others are partial to chops with tomato sauce, an addendum which has become very rare in these days, when we have come to appreciate the excellent qualities of the " love-apple," and eat the delicious fruit-vegetable either hot and stuffed, or raw as a salad. Unless the mutton chop is partaken of in a grill- room, where it comes straight from the gridiron to the table ■of the guest, an experienced gastronome will not be satisfied unless his chop is served on a hot-water plate ; for fat is a treacherous substance, and has a fatal tendency to get cold before the meat to which it belongs is half eaten. 58 THE THOROUGH GOOD COOK. This is the English chop in its beautiful simplicity ; and although I have not one word to say against the world- famed roast beef of old England, it must be remembered that there are persons to whom beef is too potent and stimulating a meat, and whose constitution and palate are more efficiently administered to by the plainly cooked chop. No special ex- ^seption need be taken to walnut pickles as a relish, but the article itself possesses so characteristic and so delightful a flavour of its own that it seems superfluous to mar its savour with the conflicting taste of vinegar. The old English cooks sometimes played sad tricks with their nmtton "steaks." One Mrs. Mason, in her "Ladies' Assistant," published in 1787, seasoned her chops with pepj)er and salt, placed them in a buttered dish Avith milk, eggs, and flour, sprinkled some beaten ginger

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.