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Breast of Lamb Broiled
Trim a breast of lamb and put it in a saucepan, cover with stock, add a bunch of sweet herbs, a slice of onion, a piece of mace and two or three cloves; set over the fire to simmer gently until tender.
Take up, dredge with salt and pepper, brush over with beaten egg and grated cracker and broil over a clear fire until brown on both sides. Take up on a heated dish, pour over a little melted butter, garnish with asparagus tips and serve with brown caper sauce.
A two-stage treatment of a cheap, fatty cut: a long gentle braise to render and tenderize, then a crumbed grilling for color and crust. The hinge is the pause between the two — the meat must be cooled and firmed before it is egged and crumbed, or the coating slides off.
- The cutBreast of lamb is the belly-and-rib flap below the shoulder, sold as lamb breast or riblets and often needing to be ordered. Reckon on 2 to 3 lb, which serves three or four; a good deal of the weight is fat and bone, so buy generously.
- Trim means more than trimPull off the papery outer membrane and cut away the heaviest surface fat. The flexible breastbone and cartilage can also be slipped out after simmering, while the meat is warm, which makes the crumbed pieces easier to eat.
- Simmer timeNo time is given. Expect 1 1/2 to 2 hours at a bare simmer, until a skewer meets no resistance. Stock should just cover; water with a bay leaf and a carrot works if you have none.
- Sweet herbs and mace"A bunch of sweet herbs" is a bouquet of parsley, thyme and bay tied with string. "A piece of mace" means a blade of mace, the lacy husk of nutmeg — a scant 1/4 teaspoon of ground mace substitutes, though the flavor is blunter.
- Press before broilingThe recipe goes straight from pot to fire, but lifting the meat out, laying it flat between two plates with a weight on top and chilling it is a common treatment for this cut: cold, pressed breast cuts more cleanly into strips or squares and holds the egg-and-crumb coat better.
- Grated crackerCrushed soda crackers or unsalted saltines, rolled fine. Dry breadcrumbs behave the same way; panko browns faster and coarser than intended here.
- A clear fireCoals with no flame or smoke. Under a modern broiler set the rack 4 inches from the element at high heat, 3 to 5 minutes a side until the crumbs are brown — the meat is already cooked, so this is color only.
- The braising liquidSkim the fat and keep the stock; it can serve as the base for the brown caper sauce, which is generally a brown roux thinned with stock and finished with a spoonful or two of drained capers and a little of their vinegar.
Breast of lamb is a thrift cut, and its appearance in a household manual reflects a kitchen economy that expected cooks to make the cheap parts of the carcass presentable. The method — boil or braise until tender, then crumb and grill — was applied across the period to breast of lamb, calf's head, pig's feet and tripe alike, and appears in English cookery under the name "broiled and breaded" or "a la Sainte-Menehould" after the French treatment of pig's trotters. The mace, cloves and bunch of sweet herbs are a familiar braising-stock seasoning, and capers with lamb or mutton is a long-established pairing in the British repertoire, generally traced to the caper sauce served with boiled leg of mutton.