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Lamb, Stewed, with Tomatoes
Stew a good-sized piece of the target of lamb in good gravy for half an hour, skim off the fat and lay it on a hot dish. Cover it over with tomato sauce, and garnish round with fried tomatoes and croutons. Pour round it some of the gravy that the meat was stewed in.
A short entry that assumes you already have gravy on the stove and a butcher who speaks Victorian. Two things need attention: the cut, and the wildly optimistic cooking time.
- "Target of lamb"An old British butchery term for the neck and breast of lamb left in one piece — the scrag end with the breast attached. Ask for a piece of lamb breast, or lamb neck fillets, or use shoulder; all three suit a long moist stew.
- Half an hour is not enoughBreast and neck are collagen-heavy cuts that only turn tender once the connective tissue has broken down. Reckon on 1½ to 2 hours at a bare simmer for a good-sized piece. Thirty minutes gives you meat that is cooked through and still tough.
- "Good gravy" means stockIn this period "good gravy" generally indicates a well-flavoured brown gravy or household stock rather than thickened sauce from a roast. Well-flavoured lamb or beef stock, enough to come most of the way up the meat, does the job.
- SkimmingLamb breast throws a great deal of fat. Skim during cooking, and if you can cook it a day ahead the fat sets on top and lifts off cleanly, which improves the gravy you pour round the dish.
- Fried tomatoesHalve firm tomatoes, cut side down in hot dripping or butter over a good heat until caramelised. Watery modern salad tomatoes collapse; plum or vine tomatoes hold their shape better.
- CroûtonsHere these are triangles or fingers of bread fried in fat and arranged round the rim, not the small cubes of a salad. Fry them at the last minute so they stay crisp against the gravy.
- YieldThe recipe specifies no quantity; a whole lamb breast of roughly 2 lb, boned and rolled or left flat, would serve about three or four with the tomato garnish.
The "target" — sometimes spelled targe — belongs to a vocabulary of butchery that has largely fallen out of use in English-speaking kitchens: the cheap forequarter cuts of a small carcass, sold as one piece and expected to be stewed. Cassell's was written for households that bought lamb by the joint rather than the tray, and its recipes for necks, breasts and scrags reflect a period when little on the animal went unused and long stewing was the ordinary way to make thrifty meat palatable. Tomatoes moved from suspicion towards general availability in Britain over the course of the nineteenth century, and tomato sauce was a common entry in general cookery books of the period, applied to mutton, lamb and cutlets alike. The croûtons round the dish are a familiar garnish of the period, a way of giving a humble stewed joint the outline of a proper entrée.