Mabel Normand
STEWED LAMB AND VEGETABLES
Scrag end or breast of lamb does for this dish, and cold lamb may also be heated, in which case the vegetables are prepared as directed, and the pieces of meat laid upon them and lightly heated. Trim all excessive fat off the scrag-end or breast (one pound). Place the meat in a sauté pan with two ounces dripping, and fry slowly till nicely colored. Add one dozen spring onions and an equal number of new carrots, and fry just till lightly colored. Remove all the fat, cover with water, add salt in the proportion of one-quarter ounce to the ounce of liquid, also a faggot of aromatic herbs, and one tablespoonful of tomato puree. Cook for threequarters of an hour. Now remove the faggot of herbs and any fat that rises to the surface, and thicken the liquid with diluted potato flour or any other starch. Now add twelve thinly peeled new potatoes and a tablespoonful peas, also pinch of pepper. Cook till all is done, serve with chopped parsley sprinkled over the dish.
A plain braise of neck or breast lamb with early-summer vegetables, written in the clipped style of a professional kitchen manual. One measurement in the text is certainly a misprint and should not be followed.
- The salt figure is wrong"One-quarter ounce to the ounce of liquid" would be a 25 percent brine, inedible and closer to a curing solution than a stew. The intended proportion was almost certainly per pint or per quart; salt the braising liquid to taste as you would any stew instead of following the printed ratio.
- Stray text at the topThe words "eight red peppers, cover with boil-" belong to a neighbouring recipe on the original page and have nothing to do with the lamb. Ignore them.
- Scrag end and breastScrag end is the bony upper neck; both cuts are fatty, collagen-rich and cheap. Ask a butcher for lamb neck or bone-in breast, or substitute shoulder cut into chunks. Boneless leg will go dry in this method.
- DrippingTwo ounces of beef or lamb dripping is about a quarter cup. Any neutral oil, or fat rendered from the lamb trimmings, works; you only need enough to brown the meat.
- Faggot of aromatic herbsA bundle of parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf tied with string, or wrapped in a leek leaf. It is pulled out before thickening, so it need not be pretty, only retrievable.
- Potato flourPotato starch slaked in cold water, added off a hard boil, gives a glossy light-bodied sauce and thins if held too long. Cornstarch behaves similarly; a small beurre manié is more forgiving if the stew has to wait.
- TimingThree-quarters of an hour will not tenderise scrag end. Expect an hour and a half to two hours of gentle simmering before the meat gives, and add the potatoes and peas only for the last 20 minutes or so, or they collapse.
- Skim twiceThe recipe has you pour off the frying fat before adding water, then skim again after the first three-quarters of an hour, before thickening. Fatty neck and breast will otherwise give a greasy sauce that no amount of starch will fix.
- YieldOne pound of bone-in lamb with the vegetables feeds two generously, three at a stretch. Scale the meat rather than the vegetables if you want it to go further.
The recipe reads like a page lifted from an Anglo-French kitchen manual rather than a Hollywood kitchen: sauté pan, faggot of herbs, tomato puree, potato flour thickening, and the assumption that the cook knows what a scrag end is. That style of "navarin printanier" — lamb braised with the first spring onions, carrots, new potatoes and peas — was a fixture of professional cookery in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and English-language cookbooks of the period carried versions of it, often with the vegetables' names changed and the technique intact. Celebrity cookbooks of this sort were sold to promote studios and stars as much as to teach cooking, and contributions attributed to them are often standard receipts, so a dish credited to a comedienne famous for custard pies may say more about the compiler's sources than about Mabel Normand's stovetop. What it does record honestly is the appeal of the cut: neck and breast were the cheap ends of the lamb, and the recipe's note about reheating cold lamb over the vegetables is a straightforward piece of household thrift.