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Lamb, Braised
Bone a shoulder of lamb, fill up the opening with veal forcemeat, skewer it securely, and braise it for two hours over a slow fire. Serve on spinach or sorrel. Probable cost, about 10d. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A boned, stuffed shoulder is still one of the better ways to cook lamb, but the instruction assumes you know what braising meant in a Victorian kitchen and what veal forcemeat was.
- Braising, as meant hereBraising, as the period understood it -- Not a dry roast. Victorian braising manuals generally have the joint go into a heavy covered pot, often on a bed of sliced carrot, onion and a little bacon or ham, with stock partway up, cooking largely in its own steam. A tight lid is the essence of the method; without it the joint dries before it is tender.
- "Over a slow fire" for two hoursA slow fire here means a bare simmer rather than a boil; a low oven is easier to hold steady than a burner if you would rather braise there. Two hours suits a modest boned shoulder of the size implied by four or five servings; a larger joint will want longer.
- The forcemeat is the reason for the thermometerBecause the stuffing is raw ground veal sitting in the centre of the joint, cook until the middle of the forcemeat reaches 165F. The lamb itself will be well past that and should be, since shoulder needs long cooking to give up its connective tissue.
- Veal forcemeatLean veal pounded or minced with a panada of bread soaked in milk, an egg, suet or butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg and lemon peel. Ground veal is a special order in most places now; ground pork, or half pork and half chicken, behaves the same way in the pot.
- SkewersButcher's twine is more reliable than skewers for a boned shoulder. Roll the joint around the stuffing and tie at inch intervals so nothing escapes into the braising liquid.
- Spinach or sorrelBoth are cooked down, drained hard and chopped, then finished with butter. Sorrel is the one that supplies acidity against fatty lamb; spinach is a milder bed. Sorrel collapses to a puree in minutes and turns khaki; that is normal. If you cannot get it, spinach with a squeeze of lemon does the job.
- The sauceThe recipe stops short of it, but the braising liquid is the point of the method. Strain it, skim the fat and reduce it to a few spoonfuls of glaze to pour over the sliced joint.
- Cost and yieldTenpence a pound is pre-decimal currency and tells you only that shoulder was a cheap cut, as it still is relative to leg. Four or five servings is right for a boned shoulder once the forcemeat is counted.
Braising is the technique that sits between roasting and stewing, and a stuffed shoulder shows what it can do: a cheap, awkwardly shaped, well-worked cut made presentable by boning it, filling the cavity and cooking it slowly in a closed vessel. The forcemeat does double duty, stretching an inexpensive joint and giving it a sliceable shape. Serving lamb or mutton on a bed of spinach or sorrel purée is often said to be an old French habit taken up by English cookery books in the nineteenth century, the sharpness of sorrel in particular being valued against rich meat in much the way mint sauce was; sorrel was a common kitchen-garden green in Britain then and has since largely fallen out of the shops.