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Lamb, Stewed Breast of
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 persons.-1 breast of lamb, pepper and salt to taste, sufficient stock to cover it, 1 glass of sherry, thickening of butter and flour. AVERAGE COST, 10d. per lb.
Skin the lamb, cut it into pieces and season them with pepper and salt; lay these in a stewpan, pour in sufficient stock or gravy to cover them, and stew very gently until tender, which will be in about 1½ hour. Just before serving, thicken the sauce with a little butter and flour; add the sherry, give one boil, and pour it over the meat. Green peas or stewed mushrooms may be strewed over the meat, and will be found a very great improvement.
TIME.-1½ hour. to Michaelmas.
SEASONABLE.-Grass lamb, from Easter
A plain braise that depends almost entirely on gentle heat and a well-flavoured stock. Breast of lamb is fatty and full of connective tissue, which is why it rewards long, slow cooking and careful skimming.
- The hinge: keep it barely simmering"Stew very gently" is the whole method. A rolling boil tightens the muscle fibres and clouds the sauce; hold the liquid at a bare tremble, lid ajar, so the collagen melts rather than seizes.
- Timing, and why 1½ hours is optimisticThe text says 1½ hour in the method and 1 hour under TIME. Modern lamb breast, bone in, generally needs 2 to 2½ hours at a low simmer before it is genuinely tender. Test with a fork rather than a clock.
- Skin the lambThis means stripping off the papery membrane and the heaviest surface fat, not skinning in any literal sense. Ask the butcher to remove the outer fell and to cut between the rib bones for you.
- Degrease before thickeningBreast throws a great deal of fat. Let the pan sit off the heat for a few minutes and lift the fat from the surface, or chill the whole thing and lift the cap, before you add the butter and flour, or the sauce will be greasy rather than rich.
- A glass of sherryThe recipe specifies only "a glass"; a Victorian wine glass is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz (60 ml). Use a dry or medium sherry; sweet cream sherry will read as sugary against the lamb.
- Thickening of butter and flourThis is beurre manié: equal weights of soft butter and flour worked to a paste, about 15 g of each for this quantity, whisked into the hot liquid in small pieces. Give it the single boil the recipe calls for so the flour cooks out, then stop.
- StockLamb or a light beef stock is right; chicken stock will do. If using shop-bought stock, choose unsalted or reduce the seasoning, since the liquid reduces slightly over two hours.
- Yield and servingFour servings as written, and a large breast is closer to three generous ones. Peas or mushrooms as suggested are worth doing, and mashed or boiled potatoes are needed to take up the sauce.
Breast of lamb was one of the cheapest cuts on the Victorian butcher's slab, and Mrs Beeton's note of tenpence a pound places it firmly in the economical end of her book. The seasonal note is a reminder of a calendar that has largely vanished from British kitchens: "grass lamb" meant animals finished on pasture rather than raised early under cover, available from Easter to Michaelmas (29 September). The sherry and the butter-and-flour finish are typical of the mid-nineteenth-century English kitchen's approach to a cheap cut, where a fortified wine and a quick liaison were the standard means of giving a plain stew the gloss of something grander. The cut fell out of fashion for much of the twentieth century and has crept back through nose-to-tail cooking, usually rolled and stuffed rather than stewed in pieces.