Lamb Cutlets with a Purée of Mushrooms.—Trim and cook and serve the cutlets as in the foregoing recipe, only in place of the cucumbers make a purée of mushrooms in the following way: stew half a pint of button mushrooms and part of their liquor in half a pint of white sauce until they are very tender (taking care the sauce does not burn), pound them in a mortar, then force them through a vegetable strainer; then add enough of the white sauce in which they were stewed to make the purée the substance of very thick cream.
Cold Lamb Cutlets in Mint Jelly.—Roast a piece of what butchers call the rack of lamb, which is really the neck and ribs. Let it get cold; cut from it six cutlets, which trim just as if they were uncooked; that is to say, remove meat and fat from the bone, and scrape it. Mask each of the cutlets in mint jelly[101-*] warmed enough to be half fluid. Arrange very carefully round an entrée dish when they are perfectly set, so that the jelly will not come off. Have a Russian salad in the centre.
How to Prepare the Salad.—To prepare this you require two or three small vegetable cutters of pretty shape; use them to trim carrots, white turnips, and cucumbers into small, attractive forms; boil these in separate waters till tender; also green peas, sprays of cauliflower, and very tiny young string-beans. Throw each vegetable as it is cooked into ice-cold water to keep the color. Have some red beet-root boiled before it is cut into shapes. Use equal quantities of each vegetable. Arrange them with peas in the centre, and the others in circles round, studying the effect of color; then dress, but do not mask, them with green mayonnaise.
At seasons when materials for Russian salad cannot readily be obtained the chops may be served with a centre of cucumber salad, or one made of the small white leaves of lettuce.
Cutlets Chaudfroid à la Russe.—For this cold dish mutton cutlets are used. They must be of the finest quality, and from mutton not newly killed. Cut as many cutlets as required, trim, and scrape the bone. Braise for an hour in a moderate oven till the meat is very tender, remove, and press between two dishes until they are cold. Then trim each cutlet into perfect shape. Boil a quart of strong stock (which already jellies) down to less than half a pint; dip each chop into this glaze once or twice, till they look “varnished.” You now require a pint of stiff aspic jelly; turn it out of the bowl, cut one or two slices a quarter of an inch thick from it, to be cut into shapes (or croûtons) with a cutter to garnish the cutlets. Chop the rest of the aspic, lay it round the dish, and the cutlets against it, with the croûtons of aspic to form the outer edge. The centre must be filled with a Russian salad, in this case stirred up with very thick mayonnaise, instead of being formally arranged. The mayonnaise must be only sufficient to dress the vegetables, none to run into the other materials, and beet-root must be added last, as it discolors the sauce if stirred up in it.
ENTRÉES OF SWEETBREADS.
Sweetbreads à la Suprême.—Take two plump sweetbreads, lay them an hour in strong salt and water, then boil them for ten minutes in fresh water; put them between two plates to flatten till cold. Cut off all the gristle and loose skin from underneath; put them to stew very gently in half a pint of good-flavored stock. Take them up, drain well, and stew them in half a pint of sauce suprême, with a dozen small mushrooms, for ten minutes.
Sweetbreads with Oysters.—Prepare the sweetbreads as in the foregoing recipe, quarter them, and put them in a stewpan with a gill of white stock, the strained liquor from two dozen oysters, a saltspoonful of salt, a pinch of pepper, and a suspicion of nutmeg. Put two ounces of butter in a stewpan over the fire, stir into it one tablespoonful of fine flour; let them bubble together, stirring the while, one minute. When the sweetbreads have been simmering twenty minutes, pour the gravy from them to the sauce; stir quickly till smooth. If thicker than very thick cream, add a little more stock. In five minutes add the oysters. Keep at boiling-point, but not boiling, till the oysters are firm and plump. Do not leave them in the sauce a minute beyond this, or they will begin to shrink. Take them and the sweetbreads up, and if the sauce is too thin to bear a wineglass of cream, boil it rapidly down till very thick; then skim, and just before pouring over the sweetbreads stir in a wineglass of thick cream. If it goes in earlier it may curdle.
It has been explained before, but I repeat it here, that there must never be too much sauce, however good, to any dish, and that the consistency is most important: it must be thick enough to mask a spoon, yet run from it freely. Nothing can be worse than a dab of white mush being served as sauce, unless it be a quantity of thin, milky soup floating on every plate. This is where the happy medium must be struck. It is perfectly easy to give exact proportions to produce certain degrees of thickness, and this has been done in the chapters on sauces; but where these sauces are used as a medium in which to cook, for instance, sweetbreads, a certain amount of liquid must be added to prevent burning. Now it is impossible to say how fast this added liquid will diminish if the simmering is as slow as it should be, it may lose hardly at all, in which case the articles stewed must be taken out, and a few minutes’ hard boiling given to evaporate the liquid and bring the sauce back to the proper point.
Sweetbreads in Cases.—Prepare two sweetbreads as directed in the foregoing recipes. Put them in a stewpan with a thin slice of fat boiled ham, half a carrot, half a turnip, and a small onion, all cut small, and laid as a bed under the sweetbreads; put in a gill of broth, a bouquet of herbs, and half a saltspoonful of salt, with a pinch of pepper. Let them stew, closely covered, one hour, turning them after the first half-hour. When done, take them up and drain them. When cold, cover with thick d’Uxelles sauce; sprinkle thickly with very fine bread crumbs. Make two rough paper cases, butter each liberally, and very carefully lay each sweetbread in one, crumbed side uppermost. Put them in a quick oven till pale brown. Have ready proper sweetbread cases, slip them neatly into them, and serve.