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Leg of Lamb a la Francaise
7 or 8 lbs. leg of lamb 1 onion minced 1 small turnip minced 4 celery leaves 3 sprigs marjoram 3 sprigs summer savory 4 cloves 12 allspice 1/2 cup Gold Medal flour 1/2 tablespoon salt Cayenne 3 tablespoons butter 6 hard boiled eggs 1 1/2 pt. of veal forcemeat Trim, wipe and place meat in kettle. Tie all vegetables and spices into a muslin bag and place in kettle with meat. Pour over this 2 quarts of boiling water. Let this come to a boil and skim carefully. Mix 5 tablespoons of Gold Medal flour, the salt and pepper, with 1 cup cold water until smooth. Add this very slowly to the kettle, cover tight, and simmer for four hours. When tender, remove meat to hot platter, skim and strain broth. Reheat, and thicken with butter and 3 tablespoons Gold Medal flour cooked together until brown. Chop whites and yolks of eggs separately. Form the forcemeat into balls and fry. Pour gravy over lamb and garnish with chopped eggs, making a hill of whites and capping it with part of yolks. Sprinkle the remainder of yolks over. Place the meat balls in groups around the dish.
A whole braised leg in a kettle, thickened twice and dressed with chopped egg — a plain enough method once the archaic parts are decoded. The hinge is heat: this must stay at a bare simmer for the full four hours or the outside of the leg shreds while the center stays tough.
- Keep it below a boilAfter the initial boil and skim, hold the liquid at 180-190F, the point where a bubble breaks the surface every second or two. A rolling boil for four hours will leave the meat stringy and cloud the broth you are about to strain and serve as gravy.
- Veal forcemeatAn assumed staple in the period: ground veal worked with suet or butter, soaked breadcrumbs, egg, and seasoning, rolled into small balls. A pint and a half is 3 cups, or roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb of made forcemeat. It is not something you will readily find ready-made; a modern veal or pork farce recipe covers it.
- The flour added to the potFive tablespoons slaked in cold water and stirred in slowly is a period trick for a lightly bodied cooking liquor. It also means the pot will catch on the bottom if the heat creeps up, so stir occasionally and use a heavy kettle.
- The second thickeningButter and three tablespoons flour "cooked together until brown" is a brown roux. Cook it to the color of a copper penny before adding the strained broth, and add the hot liquid gradually to avoid lumps.
- CayenneNo quantity is given (it is the 'pepper' referred to in the flour-and-water mixture). A scant 1/8 teaspoon is a reasonable starting point; the pepper is meant to be felt rather than tasted.
- Vessel and liquidTwo quarts of water will not cover a 7-8 lb leg. Use a deep stockpot or a large Dutch oven, turn the meat once at the halfway mark, and expect a braise rather than a poach.
- DonenessFour hours at a bare simmer will bring a leg this size to full tenderness, though the meat is lifted whole to a platter and so should still hold its shape. Test with a fork at the shank rather than by the clock; burners vary more than the original allows for.
- YieldA leg this size with forcemeat balls will serve twelve to fourteen. Any strained broth not needed for the gravy is worth keeping.
The "à la française" here refers less to any French method than to the finish: a boiled joint masked in brown gravy and dressed with sieved egg white and yolk in contrasting mounds, a style of garnish that appears through Anglo-American cookery from the mid-nineteenth century onward and was often taken to signal a formal table. Forcemeat balls fried and grouped around the dish belong to the same vocabulary, familiar from English cookery books such as those of Eliza Acton and Isabella Beeton. What makes this a Gold Medal Flour recipe rather than simply an old one is the flour itself, named three times in a dish where it does two ordinary jobs — a slurry in the pot and a brown roux at the end. Cookbooks published by milling companies in the first decades of the twentieth century were promotional documents first, and the brand name is worked into the instructions wherever the ingredient appears.