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Lamb, Breast of, Stewed, with Mushrooms
Draw out the bones, melt a little butter in a saucepan, put in the meat, and turn it about until it is equally browned all over. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper over it, and put with it a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, a shallot (or a small onion) finely minced, and the desired quantity of mushrooms. Pour in enough stock to barely cover the meat, and simmer very gently for an hour. Add a few drops of lemon-juice to the gravy ten minutes before lifting the meat. Put the lamb on a hot dish, place the mushrooms round it, and strain the gravy over all. Probable cost, 6d. to 8d. per pound.
A straightforward braise that depends almost entirely on the boning and the gentleness of the simmer. Two details need translating for a modern cook: the cut itself, and the fact that no quantities are given.
- The cutBreast of lamb is the thin, fatty belly section, still sold cheaply by butchers but rarely on supermarket shelves. Ask for it bone-in and boned out, or slide a thin knife along each rib and pull the bones free yourself while the meat is cold.
- QuantitiesThe recipe gives no weight for the meat, the mushrooms or the stock (parsley and shallot it does specify). A whole breast is roughly 1 1/2 to 2 lb boned and feeds two to three; figure 8 oz mushrooms, 1 to 1 1/2 pints stock or however much barely covers, and one shallot for that size.
- Render before you brownBreast carries a great deal of fat. Start it fat-side down in the pan with only a scrap of butter and let the fat run out over medium heat before you attempt to colour the rest, or the browning stage will simply boil in grease.
- Skim, and skim againAn hour of simmering will throw up a thick layer of fat. Skim during cooking and again after straining, or rest the strained gravy a few minutes and lift the fat off the surface before it goes over the meat.
- "Simmer very gently"Bare movement at the surface, around 180-190F, lid ajar. A rolling boil tightens the muscle fibres and the breast turns stringy rather than yielding. An hour suits a boned breast; a thicker piece may want 90 minutes.
- MushroomsWhole small button or cremini mushrooms hold up over an hour; sliced ones collapse into the gravy. If you want the sliced kind, add them in the last 20 minutes.
- The lemon at the endAdded ten minutes out rather than at the start, so the acid still registers in the finished gravy. The recipe calls for only a few drops.
- ServingBoned breast slices untidily when hot from the pot. Let it stand five minutes off the heat, then cut in thick fingers across the grain.
Breast of lamb is a classic thrift cut, and the price note is telling: at 6d. to 8d. a pound it was among the cheapest lamb a household could buy. The treatment here is straightforwardly French in outline -- brown, aromatics, barely cover with stock, long slow simmer, finish with acid -- the sort of method English cookery books absorbed through the nineteenth century as professional French technique filtered into domestic writing. Boning the breast before cooking is what this recipe calls for; it makes an awkward, rib-laced piece of meat carveable.