Home › Removes or Releves › Removes or Releves: Piquante
Removes or Releves: Piquante
Poitrine de mouton aux câpres is a breast of mutton braised, and served in Piquante sauce with capers. Boned, rolled, braised, and garnished with vegetables, it is called Cannelon de mouton à la Windsor.
A shoulder of mutton boned, stuffed, and roasted or braised, is served with Piquante sauce as Épaule de mouton farcie. En ballon-it is boned, larded, made into the shape of a balloon and braised.
This is sometimes called en musette.
A mutton steak, broiled or stewed, can be served as Filet de mouton à la Soubise-with Soubise sauce ; à la Bretonne-with haricot beans; or with any dressed vegetable. Soaked in marinade and braised, it is served à la Polonaise with stuffed mushrooms.
A mutton pie made with potatoes and onions, covered with potato paste, is called Pâté de mouton à l'Irlandaise.
Pâté à l'Écossaise is a sheep's head pie.
Boudin, or Casserole, de mouton is a mutton pudding in suet crust. Aux rognons, it is dressed with kidneys; à la Milanaise with macaroni.
LAMB.
Hanche d'agneau is a roast haunch of lamb. It is sometimes called Rosbif d'agneau à la broche.
Mutton, and then two lines of lamb. The difficulty with this page is not technique but supply: its principal ingredient has effectively left most butchers’ shops in the English-speaking world.
- Mutton is not lambMutton is a grown sheep and tastes like one — stronger, fattier, and needing exactly the long braises on this page. It is still sold, but usually only by a halal butcher, a Caribbean or South Asian butcher, or a farm direct, and you have to ask for mutton or hogget by name.
- Breast of muttonThe cheapest cut on the animal and the one the page opens with: a thin sheet of fat, meat and bone. It is good two ways and no others, braised for hours, or boned and rolled and then braised, which is what the page immediately does with it.
- Four names, one operationEn ballon, en musette, cannelon, farcie. All of them mean take the bones out, lay stuffing on the inside, roll it and tie it. A butcher will do the boning in two minutes and it is worth asking rather than attempting.
- Pâté de mouton à l’IrlandaiseMutton, potatoes and onions under a potato crust. The French name is doing visible work: this is Irish stew with a lid, dressed for a menu card.
- Suet crustBoudin, or Casserole, de mouton is a steamed suet pudding — twice as much flour as shredded suet by weight, cold water to bind. It has to be steamed rather than baked, for three hours or so, and it is the one thing on this page no restaurant will make for you.
- Hanche d’agneauA haunch is the whole leg with part of the loin still attached, more lamb than most households now cook at once. The page’s alternative name, rosbif d’agneau à la broche, says where it went: on a spit, turning in front of a fire.
This page is a short course in feeding a dinner party from the cheap end of a sheep. Breast, shoulder, steak cut from the middle, a pie of the head: these are the cuts that went to households without much money, and the book takes every one of them and gives it a French name and a sauce, so that it can be carried into a dining room as a remove. Pâté à l’Écossaise, in one flat clause, is a sheep’s head pie. Nothing on the page suggests that anybody thought this concealment dishonest; the French name was understood to be the dish’s clothing rather than a claim about its birth. The real loss since then is the animal itself. A kitchen that cannot buy mutton cannot cook most of this page, and the substitution of young lamb produces something milder, leaner and considerably less interesting than what was intended.