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Lamb En Casserole
1 pound lamb (fresh or cooked) Butter Salt and pepper 2 carrots cut in cubes 2 tablespoons chopped onion 1 tablespoon drippings 1 potato cut in cubes 1 cup brown sauce 1 tablespoon currant jelly Have the lamb cut in a slice or slices one or one and a half inches thick; sear in a frying pan; put in the casserole, brushing first with butter and seasoning. Cook until tender; parboil the carrots and sauté them in the drippings with the onion; add the carrots, the potatoes and brown sauce to the meat; cook until the potatoes and carrots are tender and serve from the casserole.
A chafing-dish braise dressed up with the name of a French vessel. The method is sound but the original assumes you already know how to make brown sauce and how long lamb takes.
- What "casserole" means hereThe word refers to the cooking vessel itself, not to a baked dish of the modern American kind; the recipe does not say whether it is meant to sit over its own flame or go into the oven. Either a heavy pan with a tight lid over low heat or a covered dish in a moderate oven will do the job.
- The cut matters more than the timingA 1 to 1 1/2 inch slice of lamb shoulder or leg needs roughly 45 to 60 minutes of gentle covered cooking to become tender. Loin or rib chops of that thickness will not braise well; they are better seared and served pink, which is not what this recipe is doing.
- If you use cooked lambThe recipe allows leftover roast, in which case skip the searing-to-tenderness stage entirely. Add the sliced meat to the sauce with the vegetables and heat through for 10 minutes, or it will dry out and shred.
- Brown sauceA cup of classic espagnole or a simple roux-based gravy made from lamb drippings and stock. A cup of good beef or lamb stock thickened with a tablespoon each of butter and flour is the practical substitute; avoid packet gravy, which is too salty against the jelly.
- DrippingsRendered fat saved from roasting, lamb or beef for preference. Butter or a neutral oil works, though you lose the savoury note the original counted on.
- The currant jellyStir it in at the end, off the heat, so it dissolves rather than scorches. It is there for the sweet-tart lift that goes with lamb, the same logic as mint sauce; redcurrant is traditional but a tart apple or quince jelly does the job.
- Parboiling the carrotsFive minutes in salted water, then drain them dry before they hit the fat, or they will steam instead of browning. The potato goes in raw and cubed small, about 1/2 inch, so it finishes with the carrots.
- YieldA pound of lamb with a potato and two carrots serves two generously, three at a stretch.
Chafing-dish cookery had a real vogue in American households from roughly the 1890s through the 1920s, and cookbooks of the period often gave it a section of its own. The appeal was partly social: a spirit lamp under a metal pan let a hostess cook at the table without a hot kitchen, which suited late suppers and small apartments. Whether this particular dish belongs to such a chapter cannot be told from the recipe itself; what is clear is that casserole is used in the older sense of the cooking vessel rather than the baked dish Americans later came to mean by it. The pairing of lamb with currant jelly is an English inheritance -- tart preserves against fatty roast meat -- and was long established on both sides of the Atlantic.