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Chopped Aspic (Lettuce Braise the lamb)
Lettuce. Braise the lamb in the usual manner; when cold, trim it, and season each cutlet. Add glaze, aspic, sherry and gelatine to the brown sauce, blend thoroughly together and coat each cutlet with it. When set pour over a little extra liquid aspic. To dish up, have a centre of macédoine, mixed with a little mayonnaise, arrange cutlets round, and decorate with chopped aspic and lettuce. Brush the cutlets with a little glaze before coating with sauce. A little mint sauce brushed over before the brown sauce is an improvement to the flavour. A little chopped tarragon and chervil added to the macédoine improves it.
This is a chaud-froid: braised lamb cutlets masked in a jellied brown sauce and presented cold. The entry is written as a memory aid for a trained cook, so almost every quantity is left out; what follows fills in the assumptions a Victorian kitchen took for granted.
- The hinge: sauce temperatureA chaud-froid coats properly only in a narrow window — cool enough to cling, warm enough to flow, roughly the consistency of pouring cream. Set the bowl over ice water and stir, testing on a chilled spoon back; too warm and it slides off the cutlets, too cool and it sets in ropes.
- Everything must be cold firstThe cutlets have to be thoroughly chilled and dry before coating, and each layer set firm in the refrigerator before the next goes on. Work on a wire rack over a tray so the excess sauce can be gathered, re-warmed and reused.
- Glaze"Glaze" here is glace de viande — brown stock reduced until it is syrupy and sets to a rubbery block when cold. A spoonful thinned with a little hot water gives the shine brushed onto the trimmed cutlets. Commercial demi-glace or a heavily reduced veal stock stands in.
- AspicClarified, well-flavoured brown stock set with gelatine. For a coating jelly reckon on a firm but not bouncy set — about 1 tablespoon (roughly 10 g) powdered gelatine per pint of stock, less if the stock is already rich in collagen. The "extra liquid aspic" poured over at the end should be barely cool and only just fluid.
- Chopped aspicA separate tray of aspic set about 1 cm deep, turned out and chopped with a wet knife into sparkling dice. It is decoration only, and it slumps in a warm room, so add it at the last moment.
- MacédoineDiced mixed vegetables — classically carrot, turnip, green beans and peas — cooked separately until just tender, cooled and dried before being bound with mayonnaise. Wet vegetables will thin the mayonnaise into a puddle under the cutlets.
- Braising the lamb"In the usual manner" points to a rack or best end braised gently in stock and aromatics until tender, then cooled before being cut down into cutlets and trimmed. The recipe itself says only to braise it and trim it when cold. Braise the day before; the meat carves far more cleanly when thoroughly cold.
- Mint sauceThe brushed-on mint sauce is the sharp vinegar-and-sugar English kind, not a mint jelly. Use it sparingly — enough acid will interfere with the set of the gelatine coating.
- Yield and servingA best end gives six to eight cutlets, enough for three or four as a cold entrée. Assemble no more than a few hours ahead, keep refrigerated, and let it stand fifteen minutes before serving so the aspic is not chalky.
Chaud-froid — literally "hot-cold" — is the technique of cooking a piece of meat, poultry or fish hot, then serving it cold under a sauce enriched with gelatine so that it sets to a smooth mask. It belonged to the grand buffet cookery that dominated late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century professional kitchens in Britain and France, where a cold table of glazed, decorated dishes could be built in advance and displayed on silver. Recipes of this kind read as shorthand because they were written for cooks who had already learned stock, glaze and aspic as separate disciplines; the entry assumes you can braise a best end of lamb without being told how. The style was carried into the English professional repertoire through Escoffier's generation, by which time aspic work — chopped, cut into croûtons, or piped — was a standard test of a young cook's neatness. The garnish of macédoine bound with mayonnaise is a period marker: cold diced vegetables in a mould or mound appear at the centre of countless dishes in books of this class.