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Braised Shoulder of Lamb
Remove the bone from a shoulder of lamb and lard it with lightly-seasoned strips of bacon fat in the thick part of the shoulder; roll the joint to a good shape, tie it round, put it into a braisingpan with a lump of butter and braise gently over a moderate fire till browned all over. Put in about eight small onions, a bundle of chopped parsley and one quart of broth, place the saucepan by the side of the fire and allow the contents to simmer until the onions are tender. Put the meat onto a hot dish, cut off the string and garnish with the onions. Boil the cooking liquor until it is reduced to a thick gravy, then pour it over the lamb, and serve.
Braised Shoulder of Lamb, African Style Season a shoulder of lamb with one pinch each of salt and pepper and tie it up. Put it in a saucepan with one sliced onion and carrot and brown for six minutes. Moisten with one pint of broth and Spanish sauce and cook for forty-five minutes. Skim all the fat from the gravy, remove the meat to a hot dish and untie it. Decorate the dish with three stuffed egg-plants and half a pint of cooked okra gumbos. Pour the gravy over the shoulder of lamb, and serve.
Braised Shoulder of Lamb, Flemish Style The same as for braised shoulder of lamb, African style, serving for garnishing half a pint of cooked carrots, turnips and red cabbage arranged around the dish.
Braised Shoulder of Lamb, Rouennese Style Braise a shoulder of lamb, cut three medium-sized turnips the shape of a large clove of garlic, put them in a stewpan with one ounce of butter and one teaspoonful of powdered loaf-sugar on top. Put them in the oven and leave until they become thoroughly brown, moving the pan often to prevent burning. Put the gravy from the meat over the turnips, dish up the shoulder, and serve. Roasted Shoulder of Lamb and Mint Sauce Wash a shoulder of lamb, dredge both sides with salt and flour, fix it on a bakingpan, with a little hot water dripping and salt, and then roast in a brick oven, basting occasionally until done. Place it on a hot dish, and serve with mint sauce.
Five treatments of one cut, written for a brigade that had stock and Spanish sauce standing ready. The essential point is that Oscar's timings assume a boned, rolled shoulder no larger than a modern half-shoulder, and even then they run short.
- Cooking time is the weak linkForty-five minutes will not tenderize a lamb shoulder, boned or not. A rolled and tied boneless shoulder of 3-4 lb needs 2 to 2 1/2 hours at a bare simmer, covered, until a skewer meets no resistance; the first version's "simmer until the onions are tender" is closer to right if you use whole onions that take an hour.
- Keep the liquid below a boilThe braise should show occasional bubbles, not a rolling boil, or the shoulder tightens and dries even while submerged. "Place the saucepan by the side of the fire" is the whole instruction: on a modern range that is the lowest setting, or a 325F oven with the lid on.
- Spanish sauceSauce espagnole, the brown mother sauce of veal stock, mirepoix and browned roux. If you are not making it, use a well-reduced brown lamb or veal stock; the point is body and depth. The recipe calls for a pint of broth and Spanish sauce together, without saying how much of each, and it is the braising liquid rather than a finishing sauce.
- LardingThreading strips of fat through the thick end with a larding needle was standard for lean joints. Modern lamb shoulder carries enough intramuscular fat that this is optional; if you do it, use unsmoked back fat or fatty pancetta rather than smoked bacon, which will dominate.
- Powdered loaf-sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone and crushed; substitute superfine or ordinary granulated. The Rouennese turnips are being glazed rather than baked dry, so a splash of the braising liquor in the pan helps, and a fairly hot oven browns rather than stews them — though the recipe's own warning to move the pan often to prevent burning still applies.
- Okra gumbosSimply okra pods, "gumbo" being the older English name for the vegetable itself. Half a pint is a volume measure — about a cupful of trimmed pods, cooked whole and briefly so they stay firm.
- Brick ovenFor the roasted version, read this as 325-350F after an initial hot 20 minutes, and take a boneless shoulder to 145F for pink or push past 175F for the falling-apart texture the cut actually prefers. The "little hot water" in the pan keeps the drippings from scorching for basting; add more as it evaporates.
- YieldA boned shoulder of 3-4 lb serves four to six. The quart of broth in the first version should come no more than two-thirds up the meat, so use a pan barely wider than the joint or you will need to reduce a great deal of liquor at the end.
Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896 while he was maître d'hôtel of the Waldorf, is organized the way a hotel kitchen thought: one cut, then a run of garnishes that convert it into different menu items. "African style," "Flemish style" and "Rouennese style" are less regional cookery than the classical French garniture system, in which a name signals a conventional set of accompaniments — here red cabbage and root vegetables for Flemish, glazed turnips for Rouennese, eggplant and okra for African, though such names were not applied uniformly from kitchen to kitchen. Shoulder suited this treatment because it was cheap, boned easily, and rolled into a shape that carved into neat rounds for service. The instruction to set the pan "by the side of the fire" belongs to the coal range, where heat was managed by moving the pot rather than turning a dial.