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Lamb Bretonne
Serve hot thinly sliced roast lamb with Beans Bretonne. Soak one and one-half cups pea beans over night in cold water to cover, drain, and parboil until KIDNEY LAMB CHOP; RIB CHOP; FRENCH CHOP. - Page 214. CROWN OF LAMB, PREPARED FOR ROASTING. - Page 219.
SADDLE OF MUTTON AS PURCHASED. - Page 191.
ROAST SADDLE OF MUTTON GARNISHED WITH CIRCULAR PIECES OF TOAST, SMALL CIRCULAR PIECES OF CURRANT JELLY, RADISHES CUT TO REPRESENT FUCHSIAS, AND PARSLEY. - Page 219. soft; again drain, put in earthen-ware dish or bean pot, add tomato sauce, cover, and cook until beans have nearly absorbed sauce.
Tomato Sauce. Mix one cup stewed and strained tomatoes, one cup white stock, six canned pimentoes rubbed through a sieve, one onion finely chopped, two cloves garlic finely chopped, one-fourth cup butter, and two teaspoons salt.
Two recipes in one: sliced roast lamb, and a pot of beans stewed in a tomato-pimento sauce. Note that the text as printed has a block of unrelated plate captions dropped into the middle of the first sentence — the instruction runs "parboil until soft; again drain," and the captions belong to illustrations elsewhere in the book.
- Cook the beans soft firstThe parboil is the hinge. Acid from the tomatoes will arrest softening, so beans that go into the sauce still firm will stay firm no matter how long they bake. Simmer them until a bean crushes easily against the roof of your mouth before draining.
- Pea beansThese are what a modern store sells as navy beans — small, white, the Boston baked-bean standard. One and a half cups dry yields roughly 4 cups cooked.
- Bean pot or earthenware dishAny covered casserole or Dutch oven works. The point is a heavy, lidded vessel that holds even heat while the sauce reduces into the beans.
- Oven heat and timeNo temperature or even a heat source is given; the text just says to cover and cook until the beans have nearly absorbed the sauce, and ranges of this period generally had no thermostat. If you bake it, 325–350°F, covered, for about an hour to an hour and a quarter, until the sauce has been drawn up and only a little liquid remains at the bottom.
- White stockFarmer's white stock is a mild unbrowned veal or chicken stock. Unsalted chicken stock is the closest thing on a shelf today.
- Canned pimentoesSold in small jars, roasted and skinned; six of the little whole ones is roughly a small jar's worth, drained, though sizes vary by brand. Sieving is what the original wants, but a short blitz in a food processor with the tomato gets you there faster.
- SaltTwo teaspoons assumes unsalted stock and unsalted beans. If your stock is commercial and salted, start with half and correct at the end.
- ServingEnough beans for four to six as a side. The lamb should be sliced thin and served hot alongside, not baked into the pot — this is a way of using a roast, not a stew.
"Bretonne" in classical French cookery means a garnish of white beans, usually with onion, tomato and sometimes garlic, and haricot beans with mutton or lamb is the standard pairing the term describes — Brittany's association with dried beans is the traditional explanation for the name. What is interesting is this version: two cloves of garlic, chopped fine, in a Boston Cooking-School recipe, at a time when garlic was still an unusual ingredient to see measured out in an American household book. The canned pimentos are the other period marker. Spanish sweet peppers packed in tins became available in American groceries around the turn of the century and turn up in cookbooks of this generation, standing in for the fresh roasted peppers a French kitchen would have used.