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Lamb, Loin of, Stewed
Take a loin of lamb, skewer down the flap, and put it into a saucepan, nearly its own size, with half a pint of good unseasoned stock, three ounces of butter, a dessert-spoonful of chopped mint-leaves, the strained juice of half a lemon, half a tea-spoonful of salt, and a quarter of a tea-spoonful of pepper. Cover the pan closely, and simmer gently for an hour and a half. Take out the meat, boil the sauce quickly for a few minutes, brown the meat before the fire or on the gridiron, serve as hot as possible, and pour the sauce over it. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A braise-then-brown method: the loin cooks gently in a small amount of buttery stock, then goes under heat to colour, and the cooking liquid is reduced into the sauce. Two things need translating for a modern cook — the vessel and the cooking time.
- The pan is the point"Nearly its own size" is the instruction that makes the dish work. Half a pint of liquid in a wide pan will boil away; in a snug pan it comes partway up the meat and the loin part-braises, part-steams. Use the smallest lidded pot or oval casserole the joint will fit in, and add a round of parchment under the lid if the fit is loose.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. "Unseasoned" matters: the sauce is reduced hard at the end, so a salted commercial stock will finish over-salty.
- Three ounces of butterAbout 85 g, six tablespoons. It is there for richness and for the final sauce rather than for frying, and much of it will need skimming off before serving — tilt the pan and spoon the fat from the surface once the liquid has settled.
- An hour and a halfA long time by modern standards. A modern loin of lamb, especially a boned and rolled one, is tender to begin with and at ninety minutes of simmering will be grey and dry. Treat this as a long braise only if you are using a bone-in, fatty loin; otherwise check at 45-60 minutes.
- Skewering down the flapThe loin has a thin belly flap that will curl and dry. Roll it under against the eye of meat and secure with skewers or butcher's twine so the joint holds a compact shape in the pan.
- Browning before the fireAn open fire or gridiron here means a hot grill or broiler. Pat the surface dry first — meat lifted from a braise is wet and will not colour until the moisture goes. Two or three minutes a side at high heat is enough, and it should go straight to the table.
- The sauceAfter skimming, boil the liquid hard for a few minutes to concentrate it; there is no thickener, so body comes from reduction and the emulsified butter. Taste for lemon and salt at that stage, and add a little fresh chopped mint at the end, since the mint simmered for an hour and a half will have lost its edge.
- Yield and costFive or six servings implies a bone-in loin of roughly 3 to 4 lb. "Probable cost, 1s. per pound" is a period price note and has no modern use.
The recipe's "Probable cost" and "Sufficient for" formulas are those of Cassell's, an alphabetical dictionary rather than a book that groups dishes by type; here mint is treated not as a sauce served alongside but as an aromatic cooked into the braising liquid with lemon and butter. The mint-and-lamb pairing in English cookery is old and much repeated in Victorian books, usually in the form of a sharp vinegar-and-sugar mint sauce; here the same flavours are softened into a pan gravy, which suits a joint that has been stewed rather than roasted. The final step -- taking the meat out and colouring it before the fire -- addresses the standing objection to stewed meat, that it comes to the table pale.