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Lamb, Saddle of, Boned, Rolled, and Braised
Take all the bones from a saddle of lamb--if possible, without injuring the upper part of the skin. Lay the meat on the table, skin downwards, and spread over it a pound of good veal forcemeat. Roll it round and round, bind it securely, with plenty of tape, skewer slices of fat bacon over it, and put it into a braising-pan, with a pint and a half of white stock, three carrots, two onions, a bunch of sweet herbs, two or three sticks of celery, and a dozen pepper-corns. Simmer gently for an hour and a half. Take out the meat, drain it, and, without removing the tape, place it between two dishes; put a heavy weight upon the top, and let it remain until it is quite cold and firm. Cover it with a coating of white sauce; let this stiffen, then brush the roll over with beaten egg, and cover it with light bread-raspings mixed with a tea-spoonful of grated Parmesan. Put the saddle in a moderate oven half an hour before it is wanted, that it may be heated through, and serve it on a hot dish. Garnish with dressed vegetables. Instead of being egged and bread-crumbed, the saddle may, after pressing, be heated in a little of the stock in which it was cooked, and served with dressed vegetables and Allemande sauce. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient for nine or ten persons.
A Victorian galantine method applied to lamb: braised, pressed cold, then crumbed and reheated. Most of the work is in the boning and the binding, and the recipe assumes both a butcher and a larder that no longer exist.
- Get the butcher to bone itA saddle is the whole double loin, and removing the chine, ribs and pelvis in one piece while leaving the skin intact is a serious knife job. Ask for it boned but not tied; a boned saddle from a small lamb runs roughly 4-5 lb, which fits the stated nine or ten servings.
- Veal forcemeatIn Victorian usage this may mean either a forcemeat made from pounded veal or the breadcrumb-and-suet stuffing customarily served with veal (breadcrumbs, suet or butter, egg, lemon zest, parsley, mace). The recipe specifies only 'a pound of good veal forcemeat'. If you make the meat version, ground veal is now a special order in much of the world; ground pork or a pork-and-veal mix behaves much the same way.
- Tape, not stringCotton tape was used because its flat width holds the roll's shape without cutting into the meat as it swells. Wide strips of muslin or several turns of butcher's twine at close intervals do the same. The tape stays on through the pressing, which is the point -- it is the mould.
- Braising liquid and panA pint and a half imperial is 30 fl oz, roughly 3 1/2 US cups. Use a heavy lidded pot just large enough to hold the roll; the liquid comes only part way up, and the bacon slices baste the exposed top. White stock is unsalted veal or chicken stock, not brown.
- Judge by temperature, not the clockNinety minutes at a bare simmer is about right for a roll this size, but the forcemeat at the centre needs to reach 165F/74C. Check with a probe before you take it out; a thick roll can lag well behind the outside.
- Cool it in the refrigeratorThe original presses the meat between two dishes under a weight until cold, which in an unheated Victorian larder was reasonably quick. Do the pressing in the fridge, and get it there within two hours of coming out of the pot -- a dense stuffed roll cooling on a counter sits in the danger zone for a long time.
- Bread-raspingsRaspings are dried crusts grated to a fine, pale crumb -- effectively unseasoned dry breadcrumbs. Panko is too coarse and shaggy for the smooth coat this dish wants.
- A moderate oven350F/175C. The half hour is for reheating a fully cooked, chilled roll through to hot, not for further cooking; cover loosely if the crumb colours before the centre warms.
- Allemande sauceFor the plainer version, this is a velouté made with white stock, thickened with egg yolks and cream and sharpened with lemon. It should not boil once the yolks are in.
This is a galantine in all but name -- boned meat, stuffed with forcemeat, rolled, braised, pressed under weight and served cold or gently reheated -- a technique that reached English kitchens from French professional cookery and became a staple of the late-Victorian cold table. The pressing is the whole logic of it: a chilled, dense roll slices cleanly into neat rounds of meat and pale forcemeat, which mattered enormously to a period that judged a dish first by how it looked on the sideboard. Cassell's costings assume the reader is checking the books; a shilling a pound for lamb placed this among the dishes an ambitious middle-class table would attempt for company rather than a Tuesday. The alternative ending -- reheated in its own stock and sauced with Allemande instead of crumbed -- suggests, perhaps, that not every kitchen had the hands to spare for two coatings and a browning.