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Lamb's Fry
Take a pound or a pound and a half of lamb's fry, wash it thoroughly in cold water, then set it in a saucepan, cover it with cold water, and let it boil for three or four minutes. Take it out, drain and dry it in a cloth. Mix a teaspoonful of flour very smoothly with a little cold water, and add to it a small pinch of salt and pepper, six tea-spoonfuls of water, and a well-beaten egg. Dip each piece of the fry into this mixture, then fry it in three ounces of hot dripping until it is brightly browned on both sides, without being at all burnt. If preferred, the fry may be cooked without the batter, or beaten egg and bread-crumbs may be substituted for it. Time, about twelve minutes. The liver should be put in two or three minutes after the rest. Probable cost, 10d. per pound. Sufficient for four persons.
A straightforward offal fry, but the ingredient itself needs decoding before anything else: "lamb's fry" in a British book of this date means a mixed plate of lamb offal, usually sweetbreads, liver, heart and often the testicles, sold together by the butcher.
- What to buyNo supermarket sells "fry" as a mixed lot; ask a butcher for lamb sweetbreads, liver and heart, or simply use 1 to 1.5 lb of one of them. In Australia and New Zealand "lamb's fry" now means liver almost exclusively, which is why the recipe's separate note about liver looks redundant to modern eyes.
- The instruction that mattersAdd the liver two or three minutes after the rest, exactly as written. Liver is done in about two minutes a side and turns grainy and dry past that, while sweetbreads and heart need longer.
- The preliminary boilThe recipe blanches the whole fry together, though the three-to-four-minute blanch mainly benefits sweetbreads and heart, which firm up and shed scum; modern practice is to leave liver unblanched, as it greys and weeps. Drain and dry the pieces hard, as the recipe directs, or the batter will slide off.
- DrippingThree ounces is roughly 6 tablespoons, a generous shallow-fry rather than a deep one. Beef dripping gives the intended flavour; lard, clarified butter or a neutral oil all work.
- The batterOne teaspoon flour, six teaspoons water and a whole egg makes a very thin coating batter, closer to an egg wash than a fritter batter. It browns fast, so keep the fat at a steady medium-high — hot enough to sizzle on contact, not smoking.
- Timing and yield"Time, about twelve minutes" most likely refers to the cooking overall rather than to each individual piece, though the book does not say. Four servings as the book says, though as a modern main course with potatoes it stretches to two or three.
- TrimmingSweetbreads want their membrane peeled after blanching; heart needs the tough valves and silverskin cut away; liver should have its outer membrane removed and be sliced no thicker than half an inch.
"Fry" is an old butcher's term for the assorted small edible parts of a young animal -- the pluck, sweetbreads and, in some markets, the testicles -- sold cheaply as a single lot. The recipe puts the probable cost at tenpence a pound, which places the dish in economical-supper territory for the book's readership. The practice of blanching sweetbreads before frying is older than the book and is still followed in professional kitchens; the liver-goes-in-last note is the sort of practical detail that separates a working recipe from a copied one. Mixed fry has largely disappeared from British shops, and the term drifted in the southern hemisphere to mean liver alone.