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Broiled Breast of Lamb
Heat a gridiron over a clear fire, grease it well with a little fat, lay the breast of lamb upon it, and when well done on one side turn it and let it cook on the other. Warm two ounces of butter, work in a little pepper and salt and spread it over the meat. Place the joint on a hot dish, and serve with mint sauce in a boat.
A terse Waldorf line-cook note rather than a full recipe: it assumes you already know that a breast of lamb needs long, gentle cooking before it ever meets the grill. That omission is the thing to fix.
- Cook it before you broil itBreast of lamb is a thin, fatty slab laced with cartilage and connective tissue; direct heat alone leaves it chewy and flares badly from the rendering fat. Many kitchens of the period braised or simmered the breast until tender, pressed and cooled it, then finished it over the fire for colour, though this recipe as written calls only for the gridiron. If you pre-cook it, allow about 2 hours at 300-325F, covered, before grilling.
- Gridiron and clear fireA gridiron is a hinged or footed iron grate set over coals; a "clear fire" means the wood or coal has burned down to steady embers with no smoke or flame. A charcoal grill after the coals have greyed over, or a heavy ridged grill pan on medium-high, gives the same thing. An overhead broiler works but you lose the drip clearance, so use a rack and a pan.
- Trim the fat capModern breast of lamb often carries a thick external fat cap. Trim it to about a quarter inch before the initial cooking, and pour off the rendered fat before grilling, or the flare-ups will blacken the surface.
- The butterTwo ounces is 4 tablespoons, which is generous for one breast; an ounce is usually enough. Season it, soften rather than melt it, and spread it on after the meat leaves the heat so it stays as a sauce instead of running into the fire.
- Mint sauce in a boatMint sauce of this period is typically chopped mint, sugar, and vinegar left to stand until the sugar dissolves, served cool and thin. A boat is a small gravy jug; the sauce is spooned over at table, not brushed on during cooking, where the sugar would scorch.
- YieldOne breast weighs roughly 1.5 to 2 lb bone-in and serves two, or three at a small portion. It is not carved so much as cut between the rib bones into strips.
- Internal temperatureBecause of the collagen, breast is not a pink cut. Take it to 190-200F in the braising stage so the tissue has broken down, then grill only long enough to crisp the outside.
Breast of lamb was a cheap cut that the great hotel kitchens used with some ingenuity: too fatty and bony for a dining-room roast, it was simmered, weighted flat under a board, cut into fingers, and grilled or crumbed and fried, appearing on menus as "epigrammes d'agneau" or simply as a broiled breast. Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896 while he was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf, is full of these short notes; they read less like instructions for a home cook than reminders written down by a man who had watched the work done a thousand times and assumed the reader had too. The mint sauce is the English half of the dish. Vinegar-and-sugar mint sauce with lamb is generally traced to British practice well before the nineteenth century, and it was a common accompaniment to lamb in American hotels of the 1890s, sent to the table in a separate boat.