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Breast of Lamb
Wipe a breast of lamb, put in kettle with bouquet of sweet herbs, a small onion stuck with six cloves, one-half tablespoon salt, one-half teaspoon peppercorns, and onefourth cup each carrot and turnip cut in dice. Cover with boiling water, and simmer until bones will slip out easily. Take meat from water, remove bones, and press under weight. When cool, trim in shape, dip in crumbs, egg, and crumbs, fry in deep fat, and drain. Serve with Spanish Sauce. Small pieces of cold lamb may be sprinkled with salt and pepper, dipped in crumbs, egg, and crumbs, and fried in deep fat.
V
Two operations in sequence: a long gentle simmer to render a fatty, bony cut tender, then a press and a fry to turn it into something crisp. The hinge is the pressing — skip it and the boned meat falls apart in the fat.
- The cutA whole breast of lamb runs 2 to 3 lb and is mostly rib bone, cartilage and fat. Butchers still sell it cheaply, often labelled lamb breast or lamb ribs; ask for it unrolled and untrimmed.
- Simmer time"Until bones will slip out easily" is 1½ to 2 hours at a bare shiver, never a rolling boil. The liquid should barely move; hard boiling tightens the meat and clouds the broth, which is worth keeping for soup.
- Bouquet of sweet herbsUsually parsley, thyme and a bay leaf tied together, though such bundles often took in marjoram or savory as well. "Sweet herbs" was the common term for the aromatic culinary herbs.
- PressingLay the boned, still-warm meat flat between two plates or in a shallow pan, weight it with a few tins, and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight. Cold and compressed, it slices cleanly into fingers or diamonds; warm, it will not hold a shape.
- Crumbs, egg, and crumbsFine dry breadcrumbs, not fresh, and the egg beaten with a tablespoon of water. Let the coated pieces sit 15 minutes in the refrigerator so the crust sets before frying.
- Deep fat375°F, in enough oil to float the pieces, 2 to 3 minutes to a deep brown. The meat is already fully cooked, so you are only crisping the coating.
- Spanish SauceA brown, tomato-based sauce given elsewhere in the book. A good tomato-based brown sauce is a fair substitute; the fried lamb needs acid against the fat.
- YieldOne breast serves three or four as a main course. The trailing "V" is a stray mark, not part of the method.
The trick here — poach a cheap bony cut, bone and press it, then crumb and fry the slices — is a French technique, related to preparations of pressed and breaded lamb breast served as épigrammes d'agneau. Breast was among the least expensive lamb cuts, and Fannie Farmer's readers were being taught precisely this kind of economy: a long unattended simmer, a press under weight until cool, and a quick fry that made a cheap cut look like a company dish. The closing sentence, turning odd scraps of cold lamb into the same crisp croquette, is the book's habit of mind in miniature — nothing bought is thrown away, and the second-day version follows the first without a new heading.