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Lamb, Shoulder of, with Truffles
Take two shoulders of lamb, bone and trim them neatly, and sprinkle over each a tea-spoonful of salt, half a tea-spoonful of pepper, a quarter of a nutmeg, grated, and two truffles cut into thin slices. Put the two shoulders together, press them closely, and tie them round securely with string. Place some slices of fat bacon at the bottom of a convenient-sized saucepan; put the meat upon this, and then some more slices on the top; add two bunches of parsley, a very small bunch of thyme, three carrots, two onions, a tea-spoonful of salt, half a dozen peppercorns, and a pint and a half of good stock. Cover the pan closely, and simmer very gently for three hours. At the end of that time, take out the meat, remove the string, place the joints on a hot dish, boil the gravy quickly down to the consistency of sauce, and strain it over them. Garnish with slices of lemon, and serve as hot as possible. If truffles cannot be easily procured, they may be omitted, and the lamb cooked in the same way without them. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
This is a braise dressed up as a roast: two boned shoulders pressed into one thick joint, cooked slowly in stock between layers of bacon. The hinge is the gentle simmer — a rolling boil will squeeze the meat dry and cloud the gravy you are meant to reduce at the end.
- Ask for the shoulders bonedThe recipe gives no weight, only a yield of six or seven persons and a price of 1s. per pound, so period shoulders were likely smaller than modern ones. A butcher will bone and trim them in a minute; keep the bones for the pot, as they will improve the reduced gravy.
- Tie it properlyLay the two boned shoulders skin side out with the cut surfaces facing each other, then tie at 1-inch intervals with butcher's twine. Loose tying is why this kind of joint collapses into two pieces when the string comes off.
- Oven instead of stovetopThe original assumes a covered pan on a slow range. A lidded Dutch oven at 300–325F holds a steadier bare simmer than most modern burners, which tend to run either too hot or off.
- Three hours is rightUnlike many Victorian times, this one is not inflated. Shoulder is collagen-rich and needs the full three hours at a bare simmer to become sliceable-tender; test with a skewer that meets no resistance.
- TrufflesFresh black truffle at the quantity implied here — two per shoulder, sliced — is a serious expense today, and the book itself gives permission to leave them out. Sliced brown or cremini mushrooms sweated in butter, or a spoonful of truffle-flecked butter stirred into the finished sauce, will scent the joint without pretending to be the same thing.
- Fat bacon means unsmokedFat bacon means barding fat -- "Slices of fat bacon" here is acting as barding fat, and in this period was likely fat streaky, often unsmoked ("green"), rather than modern heavily cured and smoked breakfast bacon. Strongly smoked bacon will dominate the lamb and the gravy.
- Watch the salt when you reduceThree teaspoons of salt in all go in before cooking — one on each shoulder, plus one in the pan — and a pint and a half of stock boiled down to sauce consistency concentrates all of it. Use unsalted or low-salt stock and taste the sauce only after reducing.
- Yield and servingSix to seven, as stated, if served with vegetables and potatoes. Rest the joint 10 minutes under foil while the gravy reduces, then carve across the grain in thick slices. "Probable cost, 1s. per pound" is the book's period price note, not an instruction.
Cassell's belonged to the era when English cookery still worked closely from French models, and this is a domesticated French braise — the shoulder boned, pressed and tied, barded with fat and cooked on a bed of aromatics, a method French kitchens applied to any cheap joint that needed both moisture and shape. Boning was the point: it turned an awkward, bony cut into something that could be carved at table like a proper joint, which mattered in households where the master carved in front of guests. Truffles appear as a mark of ambition rather than a necessity, and the dictionary's readiness to strike them out — "if truffles cannot be easily procured, they may be omitted" — is characteristic of the book, which routinely offered a grand version and a plain one in the same breath for a middle-class audience shopping at ordinary prices. The lemon garnish and the instruction to serve "as hot as possible" reflect a real anxiety of the period, when food travelled a long cold corridor from basement kitchen to dining room.