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Blanquette of Lamb
Remove the meat from two shoulders of lamb, cut it into moderate-sized squares and steep them in water for one hour. Place the meat in a stewpan, cover it with a little water or broth and one teacupful of white wine. When the liquid boils strain the broth through a sieve into a basin and allow it to remain for a few minutes to settle. Put one chopped onion into a stewpan with a little butter and fry till browned; then mix the meat with it and fry them together for a few minutes. Sprinkle in a little pepper, salt and flour and pour in by degrees enough of the broth to reach the top of the meat; add a few cloves and peppercorns, some trimmings of mushrooms and a few sprigs of parsley and bay leaf. Place the stewpan over the fire and let the contents boil quickly for ten or twelve minutes in order to reduce the liquor to one-fourth; then move the stewpan to the side of the fire and finish cooking the meat. When done skim the fat off the sauce, stir in three eggs that have been beaten with some milk and continue stirring over the fire until thick, taking care that it does not boil; grate in a little nutmeg, remove the meat from the stewpan with a fork, arrange it on a hot dish, strain the sauce over, sprinkle a little parsley on the top, and serve.
A French white stew adapted for the Waldorf kitchen, written in the compressed style of a professional cook who assumed his reader knew what to do at the stove. Two things need spelling out: the liaison and the timing.
- Never let the sauce boilThe three eggs beaten with milk are a liaison, not a thickener you can force. Above roughly 180F the eggs curdle and the sauce breaks into grains. Add a ladle of the hot sauce to the eggs first, return the mixture off the heat, then stir over the lowest possible flame until it coats a spoon.
- Quantities and yieldBone-in lamb shoulders vary, but two will likely run 8-10 lb together and yield something like 5-6 lb of boneless meat: a dish for eight to ten. For a household, one shoulder or 2-3 lb of boned shoulder halves everything cleanly. A teacupful of wine is usually reckoned at about 5-6 fl oz.
- The steepingThe hour in cold water draws out blood so the finished sauce stays pale. It is worth doing, and the first boiling in the second sentence is a blanch for the same reason discard nothing but the scum, since that broth is strained and reused.
- Browning the onionA classic blanquette is deliberately not coloured. Oscar's version browns the onion, which gives a fawn rather than ivory sauce. If you want the paler traditional result, sweat the onion in butter without letting it take colour.
- Side of the fireThis means the cool end of a coal range, a bare simmer. On a modern hob, cover and hold at 200-210F for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, until the shoulder is tender enough to yield to a fork.
- Mushroom trimmingsStalks and peelings, saved from other work in a large kitchen. Two or three whole chestnut mushrooms, sliced and added to the pot, do the same job; they are strained out with the aromatics.
- Reducing by a fourthReducing the liquor -- The recipe calls for ten or twelve minutes of hard boiling to reduce the liquor to one-fourth, concentrating it before the long slow cooking. Watch it: the flour is already in, so a fast boil in a thin pan scorches the bottom.
- ServingPlain boiled rice or steamed potatoes are the usual accompaniment; the sauce is the point of the dish and wants something to sit on. Serve immediately, since the egg-bound sauce will not reheat without splitting.
A blanquette is a white ragout the name comes from blanc, and refers to the pale sauce, finished with a liaison of egg yolks and cream, rather than to any particular meat. Veal is the canonical version, but French cookery has long applied the method to lamb, chicken and rabbit, and the technique of poaching meat in a light broth and binding the strained liquor off the heat is older than the printed recipes for it. Oscar Tschirky, ma tre d'h tel of the Waldorf, compiled his 1896 book from the working repertoire of a hotel kitchen that cooked in the French manner for an American clientele, which is why the instructions assume brigade habits: two whole shoulders at a time, mushroom trimmings kept back from other dishes, and a range with a hot centre and a cool edge that made the crucial low simmer a matter of sliding the pan rather than turning a dial.