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Braised Breast of Lamb
Have your butcher remove the bones from a breast of lamb; season the meat with salt and pepper; roll up and tie securely. Chop fine one onion, one slice of carrot and one of turnip; put two good tablespoonfuls of butter in the braising-pan; when a little warm add the chopped vegetables. Stir a few minutes, then put in the lamb, well dredged with flour. Cover the pan and place where it will cook slowly for about thirty-five minutes; then add one quart of good stock; put in the oven, allowing it to cook moderately for about one hour. Baste the meat quite often; take it from the pot, skim all the fat from the gravy, and then place where it will boil very rapidly six or eight minutes. Remove the string from the meat. Strain the gravy and pour over the dish. Serve with brown mushroom sauce.
A straightforward braise, but the timing reflects a period when lamb was slaughtered younger and smaller. The main adjustment is to cook it considerably longer than the hour given.
- Cook it much longerBreast of lamb is one of the most collagen-heavy cuts on the animal, and an hour in the oven will leave it chewy. Allow two to two and a half hours at 325F, covered, until a skewer slides through the roll with no resistance. This is the hinge of the dish.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe says only to "cook moderately" and gives no degrees; a moderate oven is conventionally taken as somewhere near 350F, and for a long braise of this cut 325F is better. The initial thirty-five minutes on the stovetop should be slow and gentle, as the recipe says, rather than a hard browning.
- The braising-panA heavy lidded pot that goes from burner to oven — a Dutch oven or enamelled cast-iron casserole. In books of this period "casserole" generally refers to the pot itself rather than to a dish baked in it.
- FatBreast is one of the fattiest cuts of lamb. Skimming the gravy is not optional housekeeping here; expect to remove a great deal. Chilling the strained liquid and lifting the solidified fat off gives a cleaner result than skimming hot.
- StockOne quart of "good stock" means unsalted or lightly salted brown stock. Modern commercial broth is salted and will concentrate sharply during the final rapid boil, so taste before seasoning the meat heavily at the start.
- Boning and tyingAsk for the breast boned and the flap of gristle trimmed. Roll with the fat outward and tie at one-inch intervals with butcher's twine; a loose roll will unwind in the liquid.
- YieldA breast runs about 2 to 3 lb bone-in and rather less once boned, serving three or four. Two breasts are worth doing at once, since the cut is inexpensive and the braise reheats well.
- Brown mushroom sauceThe reduced, strained braising liquid is essentially the sauce already. If you want the mushroom version, sauté sliced mushrooms in butter and finish them in the reduced gravy rather than making a separate sauce.
Breast of lamb was a cheap cut then and remains one now, which is why it turns up in a general household book rather than a book of company dishes: it rewards time and technique instead of money. The method described here is classical braisage — a bed of aromatic vegetables, a slow covered start, then moist heat and frequent basting — filtered through the American domestic-science cooking schools of the 1890s, which taught French method in plain English to middle-class housekeepers. The instruction to have the butcher bone the breast is a reminder of how the period shopped: the skilled knife work was, it seems, often left to the neighborhood butcher, and the cook's task began at the pot.