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Casserole of Lamb
2 1/2 pounds loin of lamb, 1/2 cup rice, 2 cups good gravy, 1 blade mace, 1/2 cup Crisco, 2 egg yolks, salt and pepper, and a little grated nutmeg. Half roast loin of lamb, and cut it into steaks. Boil rice in boiling salted water for 10 minutes, drain it, and add to it gravy with nutmeg and mace; cook slowly until rice begins to thicken, remove it from fire, stir in Crisco, and when melted add yolks of eggs well beaten; Crisco a casserole well, sprinkle steaks with salt and pepper, dip them in melted Crisco, and lay them in Criscoed dish; pour over gravy that comes from them, add rice and simmer for 1/2 an hour.
A two-stage braise: the loin is part-roasted, then finished under a blanket of egg-enriched rice. The wording is compressed and assumes a cook who already knows what a casserole is and how much heat it wants.
- The hinge: keep the heat low once the yolks go inThe rice is thickened with two beaten yolks off the fire, then held at a bare simmer for half an hour. If it boils, the yolks scramble and the rice turns grainy rather than creamy. Cover the dish and use gentle heat — a 325F oven does this more reliably than a burner.
- "Casserole" means the panIn this period the word still generally denoted the lidded earthenware or enamelled vessel; the later American sense of the food itself was only beginning to attach to it. Any heavy covered braiser or Dutch oven that holds the steaks in one layer will do.
- CriscoThis book was written to sell it. Half a cup of hydrogenated shortening is generous by modern taste; a neutral oil substitutes measure for measure, butter roughly so, allowing for its water content. Using less will not harm the dish. "Criscoed" simply means greased.
- Half roast the loinNo temperature is given. Roast at 425F for about 20 minutes — enough to colour the outside and render some fat, leaving the interior distinctly underdone, since it gets another half hour in the rice.
- Blade maceA whole blade is the dried outer covering of the nutmeg seed, sold as brittle orange-brown flakes. Fish it out before serving. About a quarter teaspoon of ground mace stands in, though it is sharper.
- The riceLong-grain white, parboiled 10 minutes then finished in the gravy. It will drink most of the two cups; keep a little extra stock nearby if the pan looks dry before the half hour is out.
- "Good gravy"In books of this period the phrase usually meant a meat-based gravy or well-reduced stock rather than anything from a packet. Lamb or beef stock reduced until it coats a spoon gives the right body.
- YieldTwo and a half pounds of bone-in loin serves four, with the rice doing much of the work.
This comes from Marion Harris Neil's A Calendar of Dinners, one of the recipe books Procter & Gamble commissioned after introducing Crisco in 1911 — hence a lamb braise in which the shortening is named five times, once outright as a verb ("Crisco a casserole well") and once as the participle "Criscoed." A loin part-roasted and then finished beneath spiced, egg-thickened rice recalls older pilaf-topped meat dishes, and the mace-and-nutmeg seasoning is the conservative English hand that Victorian and Edwardian cookbooks kept using for lamb and mutton. Here the two yolks are what turn a pan of rice into a binding, custard-like sauce.