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Lamb, Neck of, Boiled
Plunge a neck of lamb into as much boiling water as will barely cover it. Let it boil for five minutes, then pour in a small cupful of cold water, draw it to the side of the fire, remove the scum as it rises, and simmer very gently for one hour. Put the lamb on a hot dish, pour over it half a pint of parsley sauce, and serve as hot as possible. Turnips and carrots should be sent to table with it. Probable cost, 9d. per pound. Sufficient for three persons.
A plain boiled joint of the sort that anchored mid-week dinners in Victorian households. Two things decide whether it works: the size and cut of the neck you buy, and keeping the water at a bare tremble.
- The cutA Victorian "neck of lamb" is bone-in, usually the scrag end or middle neck, sold in one piece. Most butchers now break it into chops or sell boneless neck fillet; ask for the whole middle neck if you want the original dish. Boneless fillet is a different proposition and will be done in well under an hour.
- One hour is optimistic for bone-in neckNeck is heavily worked, collagen-rich meat. A whole bone-in piece needs closer to 1½ to 2 hours at a bare simmer before it slices cleanly and stops chewing tough; the joints sold as lamb in this period were often smaller than a modern one, which may account for the shorter time. Test with a skewer rather than the clock.
- Why the cold water goes inThe cupful of cold water knocks the pot off the boil and brings scum to the surface where it can be lifted. It is a clarifying trick, not a cooking one. Keep the pan at 180-190F afterwards, with the surface barely shivering; a rolling boil shreds the outside and leaves the centre tough.
- Half a pint of parsley sauceAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups. Period parsley sauces were generally a plain white sauce, made with milk and sometimes loosened with a little of the cooking liquor, with a generous handful of chopped parsley stirred in off the heat so it keeps its colour.
- Keep the brothThe cooking water is a well-flavoured light lamb stock. Skim the fat and use it for the sauce, or for the turnips and carrots, which can be cooked in it alongside during the last 25 minutes.
- Serving hotThe instruction to serve "as hot as possible" is not filler. Boiled lamb is fatty and the fat congeals fast on a cold plate. Warm the dish and the plates, and carve at the table.
- Yield and costThree portions, as stated, from a joint of roughly 2 to 2½ lb. The 9d. per pound is a period price note of no practical use today.
Boiling was the default treatment for cheaper joints in a nineteenth-century kitchen: it needed no oven, one pot could carry the vegetables, and the liquor became the next day's soup or the sauce for the dish itself. Neck was among the less expensive parts of the lamb. Parsley sauce with boiled meat is a long-standing British pairing, generally traced to the same logic as parsley with boiled bacon or fish — a plain white sauce loosened with the cooking liquor, brightened with herb, to counter the flatness that boiling leaves behind. The turnips and carrots are not garnish but part of the same pot economy: root vegetables that could go in whole, cook in the broth, and come out as the vegetable course.