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Lamb En Casserole
2½ lbs. loin of lamb 1/4 lb. (1/2 cup) rice I/4 lb. (1/2 cup) butter 2 egg yolks 1 pint (2 cups) good gravy Salt and pepper I blade mace A little grated nutmeg Half roast the loin of lamb, and cut it into steaks. Boil the rice in boiling salted water for ten minutes, drain it, and add to it the gravy with the nutmeg and the mace; cook slowly until the rice begins to thicken, remove it from the fire, stir in the butter, and when melted add the yolks of eggs well beaten; butter a casserole well, sprinkle the steaks with salt and pepper, dip them in melted butter, and lay them in the buttered dish; pour over the gravy that comes from them, add the rice and simmer for half an hour.
A two-stage dish: the lamb is partly roasted and finished buried in an enriched rice, which does the work of both starch and sauce. The egg yolks are the fragile part.
- Keep the yolks below a simmerOnce the beaten yolks go into the rice the mixture must not boil, or it will scramble into grains and weep. Take the pan off the heat before stirring them in, and hold the finished dish at a bare tremble rather than a true simmer.
- What "casserole" means hereThe word here seems to mean the lidded pot itself rather than a baked-in-the-oven mixture: the recipe says to butter the casserole and then calls it "the buttered dish." A heavy covered Dutch oven or a lidded stoneware baker suits it. The recipe directs a simmer, not an oven; if you prefer the steadier heat of a low oven that is a modern substitution, not the book's instruction.
- Half roasting the loin"Half roast" means take the loin only partway, then cut it down between the bones into steaks; the recipe gives no temperature or time. Since it finishes in the rice for half an hour, pull it well short of done.
- "Good gravy"Not thickened pan gravy in the American sense but a strong brown stock or reduced jus. Two cups of a decent lamb or beef stock, reduced and well seasoned, is the intent. Unsalted stock is safer given the butter and the roasting salt.
- Rice quantity and behaviourA half cup of raw rice, parboiled ten minutes, then cooked in the pint of gravy: it will take up some of the liquid and the rest reduces, which is what the recipe means by cooking until the rice "begins to thicken." Expect a loose, saucy bed rather than separate grains; add a splash more stock if it tightens too far before the lamb is done.
- Blade maceA blade is one piece of the dried aril of nutmeg, sold whole in spice shops. Remove it before serving. If you have only ground mace, a scant quarter teaspoon stands in, though the flavour is blunter.
- The butterA half cup of butter into a half cup of rice is period-typical richness. Two to three tablespoons carries the same idea without pooling fat on the surface, and the dish is no worse for it.
- YieldFour servings. Something sharp alongside—redcurrant jelly, pickled walnuts, a green salad with vinegar—cuts the butter and yolk.
Casserole cookery books proliferated in Britain and America, helped by fireproof earthenware and enamelled cast iron, which made it possible to bring a cooking vessel straight to the table. The technique here is older than the book: a joint partly roasted, jointed, then finished slowly in a sealed pot with a starch is a thrifty way of stretching a small loin and of catching every drop of the roasting juices. The mace, nutmeg and egg-yolk liaison are often said to belong to a still older English tradition\—mace was a common warm spice for mutton and lamb, and yolks one familiar way of giving body to a sauce.