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Lamb, Breast of, Stewed
Remove the skin from a breast of lamb, cut the meat into neat pieces, strew a little pepper and salt over these, place them in a stewpan with as much weak stock as will cover them, and let them simmer very gently until tender. Drain the meat, and place it on a hot dish. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and butter, add a glass of sherry or any other light wine, and boil for two or three minutes longer. Stewed mushrooms or cucumbers are a great improvement to this dish. Time to stew, about an hour. Probable cost, 6d. to 8d. per pound. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A plain braise that depends almost entirely on skimming and low heat, since breast of lamb is one of the fattiest cuts on the animal. A few of the book's terms need translating.
- The cutBreast of lamb is the belly end of the ribs — fatty, well marbled, cheap, and sold today more often rolled and boned or cut into riblets. Ask for it bone-in and cut across the ribs into two-inch pieces; a 1.5-2 lb breast matches the stated yield of three or four.
- Skin and fatThe "skin" is the papery membrane over the outer fat, which shrinks and toughens if left on. Pull it off with a cloth for grip, and trim the heaviest fat pads at the same time or the finished gravy will be greasy.
- Weak stockA light, unreduced, unsalted broth — modern low-sodium chicken or a mild lamb stock diluted by half with water. A concentrated stock here will oversalt badly once it is reduced and thickened.
- Very gentlyThe hinge of the dish. Held at a bare tremble around 180-190F, the breast turns silky in about an hour; at a rolling boil the same meat goes stringy and the liquid emulsifies with the rendered fat into a cloudy gravy that will not clear.
- Skim before thickeningThe recipe does not say it, but lift the fat off the cooking liquid once the meat is out, or the flour and butter will simply bind it in. Chilling the liquid briefly makes this easy.
- Flour and butterEqual weights kneaded raw into a paste — beurre manié — whisked into the simmering liquid in small pieces. About 1 tablespoon of each will thicken a pint of gravy lightly; use more if you want it to coat.
- A glass of sherryRoughly 2 to 3 fl oz in period usage. Add it with the thickening and give it the full two or three minutes at a boil to take the raw edge off the wine — a short boil drives off some, not all, of the alcohol; a dry or medium sherry suits better than a sweet one.
- The garnishesCucumber was a standard hot vegetable in Victorian cookery: peel, seed, cut into batons and stew in butter until translucent. Add either cucumber or mushrooms to the finished gravy rather than cooking them with the meat, where they would collapse.
- CostSixpence to eightpence a pound places this among the cheaper meats in the book. Breast is still inexpensive, though you may need a butcher rather than a supermarket.
Cassell's arranges its entries alphabetically as a dictionary, and lamb runs through the cuts, so the breast gets its own short paragraph as a matter of completeness rather than enthusiasm. Nineteenth-century English cookery treated the breast as a stewing or braising cut precisely because its fat and connective tissue reward long moist cooking, and the low price note tells you which household it was written for. The finishing touches are the era's standard upgrade path: a thickening of flour and butter, a glass of wine, and a stewed vegetable to lift a cheap cut toward the look of a made dish. Stewed cucumber, now nearly forgotten in Britain, appears in Victorian and Georgian cookbooks as an accompaniment to lamb and mutton.