Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Fricassee of Lamb
Fricassee of Lamb
Cut the breast of a lamb into square pieces, sprinkle salt and flour over, and brown in a little butter. Place them in a stewpan with a sliced onion and a little water, and simmer until the bones will slip out easily. Take the lamb out, remove the bones, strain the liquor, and pour off the fat. Boil the liquor over again, put in the meat with a little salt and pepper, and stew for a little while longer; then add one quart of peas, and simmer for fifteen minutes. When ready to serve turn the meat onto a hot dish.
A brown fricassee built on lamb breast, one of the cheapest and fattiest cuts on the animal. The recipe assumes you know how to judge doneness by feel, so the numbers below fill in what Oscar left out.
- The cutLamb breast is the belly flap, streaked with fat and cartilage and sold bone-in as riblets or denver ribs. Order it ahead from a butcher; supermarkets rarely stock it. Two to two and a half pounds serves four.
- The hinge: cook until the bones slipThat instruction is the whole recipe. Breast needs a long, low simmer to render its fat and soften the connective tissue, which in practice is 1.5 to 2 hours at a bare tremble. Rushing it leaves the meat tough and the sauce greasy.
- DegreasingLamb breast throws off a great deal of fat, and Oscar's step of straining and pouring it off is not optional. Chilling the strained liquor until the fat sets on top removes far more than skimming hot, and the dish is better for being made a day ahead.
- "A little water"Enough to come about halfway up the meat, roughly two cups for a breast this size. The flour from the browning will thicken it as it reduces; if the finished liquor is thin, boil it down rather than adding more flour.
- A quart of peasThis means shelled green peas by volume, about three to four pounds in the pod, or roughly a pound and a quarter of frozen peas. Fifteen minutes suits large, starchy shelled peas; modern sweet or frozen peas need three to five minutes, added at the very end so they stay green.
- SeasoningSalt goes in twice here, before browning and again after the liquor is degreased, and the second addition matters because reducing concentrates whatever was already there. Taste after the reduction, not before.
- ServingServes four with boiled potatoes, rice or bread to catch the sauce. A warmed platter is worth the trouble, as the rendered fat in the sauce congeals quickly on a cold dish.
Fricassee entered English by the sixteenth century, from the French fricasser, to fry or stew in a sauce; the origin of the French verb itself is uncertain. Classically it sits between a saute and a stew: the meat is cooked in fat and then finished in its own liquor. Many nineteenth-century fricassees were of chicken or veal and finished white, with cream or egg yolk; this one is a brown fricassee, the meat floured and coloured first, a treatment often given to stronger meats like lamb and rabbit. The pairing with a quart of peas is seasonal thinking of the plainest kind: spring lamb and spring peas arrived together, and the combination survives in dishes from Greek arni me araka to English lamb with minted peas.