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LAMB, BREAST OF, BRAISED (sometimes called Lamb a la Milanaise)
Skin a breast of lamb, and scald it for two or three minutes in boiling water. Drain it, and plunge it at once into cold water. Peel a lemon, cut it into thin slices, lay these on the breast, and afterwards cover it all over with bacon. Put the meat into a braising-pan or stewpan, pour over it half a pint of nicely-flavoured stock, and let it simmer very gently until done enough. Have ready half a pound of boiled macaroni, put it on a hot dish, place the lamb upon it, and cover the whole with half a pint of good brown gravy. The appearance of the dish will be very much improved if the lamb is glazed. If preferred, the macaroni may be omitted, and spinach served with the lamb. Time to simmer, until tender, from an hour and a half to two hours. Probable cost, 6d. to 8d. per pound. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A slow braise of a cheap, fatty cut, dressed up with lemon, bacon and pasta. Two things decide whether it succeeds: keeping the liquid at a bare tremble, and dealing with the fat before it reaches the plate.
- The hinge: barely simmerBreast of lamb is connective tissue and fat, and the recipe's hour and a half to two hours suits a liquid that only shivers rather than bubbles. A hard simmer tends to give stringier, drier meat. A closely covered pan in a low oven is easier to hold steady than a burner, though the original works the pan on the stove.
- "Skin" the breastThis means stripping the tough papery membrane from the outer surface, and it is worth doing properly with a small knife. Butchers who carry breast of lamb sell it whole or cut into strips; a whole bone-in breast of roughly two pounds suits the quantities here.
- Why blanch and shockThe two-minute scald followed by cold water firms the surface and rinses off scum, so the braising stock stays clear enough to reduce into glaze later. Skipping it gives you a greyer, cloudier result rather than a failed one.
- Half a pint of stockThat is half an imperial pint, about 10 imperial fluid ounces or 285 ml, nearer a cup and a quarter in US measure than a cup. It is deliberately shallow: this is a braise, not a boil, so keep the pan closely covered and turn the meat once or twice.
- The bacon is bardingSliced streaky bacon laid over the top bastes the meat as it renders. Use unsmoked if you can, since modern smoked bacon will dominate the lemon.
- Skim before servingBreast throws a great deal of fat. Lift the meat out, let the liquid settle a minute and spoon the fat off, or chill the braise and lift the cap. The original assumes a cook who does this without being told.
- GlazingReduce a skimmed, well-flavoured stock (or the braising liquid) to a syrup and brush it over the meat, repeating two or three times. Period glazing was often done with a separately made meat glaze. Either way it does improve the look, as promised.
- Brown gravy and macaroni"Good brown gravy" here means a made brown sauce rather than the pan liquid as it stands; period brown gravies were commonly reduced and also thickened with browned flour. Another half pint of it. Macaroni of this period came as long tubes, and English cooks generally boiled it soft; cook it as you prefer and toss with a little butter to keep it from setting into a mass under the meat.
- ServingThree to four people, as stated. Carve down between the rib bones into strips rather than trying for slices.
Breast was one of the cheapest cuts on the carcass, and the price note of 6d. to 8d. per pound tells you where it sat in a late-Victorian household budget: this is a dish for stretching a small joint into a presentable dinner rather than a luxury. The dressing-up is done by technique, with barding bacon, a glaze and a separately made brown sauce doing the work of a better cut. The alternative name is the giveaway as to how the pasta got there: in nineteenth-century French and Anglo-French kitchen language a la Milanaise was applied loosely to garnishes involving macaroni. Cassell's, compiled for middle-class households, is full of such borrowed French labels attached to thrifty English cuts, and it offers spinach as a substitute for the macaroni.