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Lamb, Shoulder of, Grilled
Take a shoulder of lamb, plunge it into boiling water, let it boil three or four minutes, then draw it to the side of the fire and simmer it gently for three-quarters of an hour. Take it up, score it nearly to the bone in squares an inch apart, brush it over with the yolk of an egg, and sprinkle upon it bread-crumbs which have been seasoned with a tea-spoonful of salt and half a tea-spoonful of pepper, and flavoured with a table-spoonful of dried herbs, of which two parts should be parsley, one thyme, and one marjoram. Broil the meat over a clear fire until it is lightly browned, and send the following sauce to table with it. Mix half a salt-spoonful of cayenne with four ounces of pounded sugar. Add half a pint of white vinegar, and simmer over the fire until the sugar is dissolved. Add a glass of claret, and simmer again for a quarter of an hour. Serve very hot in a tureen. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A two-stage method: the shoulder is part-boiled, then crumbed and finished under high heat. The crumb coat is the fragile part, and the sweet-sour sauce is essentially an agrodolce.
- The hinge: dry the meat before crumbingLift the shoulder from the water and let it stand ten minutes so the surface dries and the joint firms up. Egg yolk brushed onto a wet, steaming surface will slide off, taking the crumbs with it.
- Size and timingA bone-in shoulder of lamb today runs roughly 3-6 lb, depending on whether it is a half or a whole shoulder. Forty-five minutes at a gentle simmer will not make it tender; expect meat that carves in slices rather than falling apart, which is what the scoring and grilling want, and check that a large joint is cooked through before it goes to the fire. If you prefer it tender enough to pull, the simmer needs closer to two hours, and the crumb finish still works.
- "Broil over a clear fire"That means direct radiant heat from glowing coals with no smoke. A modern overhead broiler set high, with the meat 4-5 inches from the element, does the same job in 5-8 minutes. Watch it continuously: crumbs go from gold to black quickly.
- ScoringCut the squares an inch apart and nearly to the bone, as directed. The cuts hold the crumb mixture and let the seasoning reach the interior of the joint.
- Measures in the sauceFour ounces of pounded sugar is about half a cup of caster or granulated sugar. Half a pint, in this British book, is 10 fl oz, or 1 1/4 US cups. A salt-spoonful is roughly a quarter teaspoon, and "a glass of claret" means a wine glass of dry red Bordeaux-style wine, usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz.
- The sauce is a sharp oneHalf a cup of sugar to 10 fl oz of vinegar reduces to a thin, aggressive sweet-sour syrup with a cayenne edge. Simmer the second stage uncovered so it thickens slightly, and taste before serving; a little more sugar softens it if your vinegar is strong.
- Dried herbsThe tablespoon of mixed dried herbs works out to roughly 1 1/2 teaspoons parsley, 3/4 teaspoon thyme and 3/4 teaspoon marjoram. Dried parsley contributes little flavour now; fresh chopped parsley in the same proportion is better, though it will brown fast under the grill.
- YieldThe original claim of four or five persons is right for a small shoulder served with the sauce and a starch. A 4 lb joint will stretch to six.
Boiling a joint and then finishing it with egg, crumbs and fierce heat was a familiar kind of nineteenth-century economy: the grilling stage turned what would otherwise be pale boiled mutton into something with colour and crust. Cassell's, apparently compiled for middle-class households in what looks to be the 1870s and reissued for decades, is full of these double-cooked joints, and the "probable cost, 1s. per pound" line suggests that the book was pitched at cooks working to a written budget. The accompanying sauce seems to belong to the long British taste for sweet-sour condiments with mutton and lamb, a line often traced from medieval vinegar-and-sugar sauces through to bottled mint sauce and Cumberland sauce; the cayenne and claret here place it squarely in the Victorian version of that habit.