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Blanquette of Lamb
Cut remnants of cooked lamb in cubes or strips. Reheat two cups meat in two cups sauce, - sauce made of onefourth cup each of butter and flour, one cup White Stock, and one cup of milk which has been scalded with two blades of mace. Season with salt and pepper, and add one tablespoon Mushroom Catsup, or any other suitable table sauce. Garnish with large croûtons, serve around green peas, or in a potato border, sprinkle with finely chopped parsley.
A leftovers dish built on a thick velouté enriched with milk. The proportions are heavy by modern standards — a quarter cup each of butter and flour to two cups liquid is a very stiff sauce, closer to a binding paste than a pouring one.
- The hinge: reheat, do not cookThe lamb is already cooked; it only needs to warm through in the finished sauce, three or four minutes over low heat. Boiling it in the sauce dries the meat and turns the strips stringy.
- Sauce thickness1/4 cup butter and 1/4 cup flour to 2 cups liquid works out at 2 tablespoons of each per cup, the book's standard medium white sauce: thick enough to bind the meat rather than pour freely. If you want a sauce that coats more lightly, use 3 tablespoons each in total, or thin the finished sauce with a little more stock.
- Blades of maceA blade is one piece of the lacy aril from a nutmeg, sold whole in some spice shops. Two blades scalded in the milk and then strained out stand in for somewhere between a quarter and a half teaspoon of ground mace, depending on the size of the blades, though ground mace loses aroma quickly and should be added at the end.
- White StockThe book's own preparation: veal or fowl bones simmered without browning. A low-sodium chicken stock is the closest supermarket substitute; avoid dark beef stock, which fights the pale colour the name blanquette depends on.
- Mushroom catsupA thin, dark, salty mushroom liquor, not the tomato condiment. Still sold in Britain; a teaspoon of Worcestershire plus a little soy, or a dash of mushroom soy, gives the same savoury depth. Add it after seasoning, since it carries salt of its own.
- CroûtonsHere they mean large triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter and stood around the edge of the dish, not the small cubes sold for salads.
- Potato borderStiff mashed potato piped or spooned into a ring on a heatproof platter, browned briefly under a hot broiler, with the blanquette poured into the well.
- YieldTwo cups of meat in two cups of sauce serves four as a main course with the peas and potato, or six in smaller portions.
Blanquette comes from the French blanc, white: the classic version is veal simmered in a stock that is never allowed to colour, then bound with a white sauce and, traditionally, finished with egg yolk and cream. Fannie Farmer's version is a thrift dish rather than a braise — it starts from remnants of cooked lamb, and belongs to the long run of entries in this book that deal with what to do with Sunday's joint on Monday. The mushroom catsup is the older English layer showing through: bottled mushroom and walnut liquors were standard store-cupboard seasonings well before commercial tomato ketchup pushed them aside.