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Braised Breast of Lamb
Remove the bones from a breast of lamb with a sharp-pointed knife, season the meat well with pepper and salt, then roll it up and tie it securely with twine. Chop fine one onion, a slice of carrot and a slice of turnip. Put them in a braising pan with a lump of butter and stir over a brisk fire for five minutes; then put in the lamb, sprinkling it well with flour. Place the lid on and stand the stewpan where the meat will cook slowly for another hour, basting it frequently. When ready remove the meat, cut off the string and place it on a hot dish. Skim the fat off the gravy, strain the latter over the meat, and serve while very hot with a sauceboatful of either tomato or bechamel sauce.
Braised Breast of Lamb, Milanese Style Trim a breast of lamb, and put it into a saucepan in which there is a layer of thin slices of bacon (fat); put some slices of lemon on the breast, then cover it with more slices of fat bacon. Pour in one-half pint of stock, and pack in an onion cut in quarters. Put the lid on the stewpan with a few live ashes on the top, and braise slowly by the side of the fire until the breast is done, glazing it when cooked. Place some dressed macaroni on a hot dish, lay the joints on it, pour over some rich brown gravy, and serve.
Two braises for the same cut, written when a breast of lamb was a cheap joint every butcher had on hand. The instructions assume a hearth or a coal range, and the first version's timing is the thing to fix.
- An hour is not enoughBreast of lamb is layered fat, thin muscle and a lot of connective tissue. Give it 2 to 2 1/2 hours in a covered pot at 300-325F, until a skewer meets no resistance; at one hour it is still tough and the fat has not rendered.
- Add liquidThe first recipe names no braising liquid at all, relying on a tightly lidded pot by a slow fire. In a modern oven add about a cup of stock or water after flouring the meat, enough to come a third of the way up the roll, and check it partway through.
- "Brisk fire" and "slowly"Brisk is high heat on the stovetop for the vegetables. For the slow cooking that follows the book gives no temperature; a workable modern equivalent is roughly 300-325F in the oven, or the lowest steady burner with a heat diffuser.
- Basting a covered potFrequent basting made sense at the hearth, where the lid came off anyway; the second recipe here banks live ashes on the lid, the first simply stands the pan by a slow fire. In an oven, lift the lid two or three times at most and spoon liquid over the roll; every opening costs heat and steam.
- Boning and tyingAsk the butcher to bone the breast and keep the bones for the pot. Roll it fat side out and tie at 1-inch intervals so it holds its shape through a long braise; season the inside surface before rolling.
- Skim seriouslyThis cut throws a great deal of fat. Chill the strained liquid briefly and lift the cap, or blot it with paper; unskimmed, the gravy is greasy enough to spoil the dish.
- Milanese measuresHalf a pint of stock is one cup. "Slices of fat bacon" means unsmoked pork fat or fatback for barding, not modern smoked breakfast bacon, which will dominate the lemon.
- Live ashes on the lidEmbers on a flat lid gave gentle heat from above. A covered Dutch oven in a 300-325F oven does the same job.
- Glazing, and "dressed macaroni"To glaze, uncover the meat toward the end, reduce the strained cooking liquid to a syrup and brush it on. Dressed macaroni is simply boiled macaroni tossed with butter, and in the Milanese manner grated Parmesan is appropriate.
- YieldA boned breast of 2 to 3 lb serves three, generously four with the macaroni.
Oscar Tschirky, maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf, put his name to a large 1896 compendium that ran from banquet cookery down to thrift cuts like this one, and the breast is squarely in the second category: the fatty underside of the ribs, boned, rolled and braised because it will not stand roasting. The "Milanese style" label in nineteenth-century hotel kitchens generally signals macaroni and cheese as a garnish rather than any specific Lombard recipe, part of the French restaurant habit of naming dishes for the garnish; the lemon slices and pork fat here are barding and brightening tricks that predate the label by a long way. Braising by the side of the fire with embers heaped on the lid, described in the second version, is the older hearth method that the coal range and then the gas oven made unnecessary, and its survival in a hotel book of the 1890s shows how recently the two technologies overlapped.