Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Roasted Haunch of Lamb
Roasted Haunch of Lamb
Trim the shank bone of a haunch of lamb, fold the loan underneath, fasten it with skewers, season and roast in a pan in a hot oven, basting often with butter. When it is nearly cooked sprinkle some stale breadcrumbs and a little salt over, baste with butter and let the joint brown. Put the haunch on a hot dish, tie a ruffle around the bone, make a rich gravy, and serve it with the meat, also some mint sauce, both being placed in sauceboats. Broiled Lambs' Kidneys, Maitre d'Hotel Plunge the kidneys into boiling water for an instant, split down the middle without cutting them clear through, skin and run a fine skewer through each to keep them flat. Season well with pepper and salt, warm a little butter and brush over them. Lay them on a well-greased, hot gridiron, the cut side downwards; when that side is done, turn them over the cook the other side. Remove the skewers, lay the kidneys, hollow side up, on a hot dish, put a little maitre d'hotel butter on each, and serve.
Broiled Lambs' Kidneys with Colbert Sauce Split open eight or nine kidneys, skin them, place them on a dish and moisten them well with sweet oil. Dust over with one tablespoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of pepper and one-half teaspoonful of nutmeg. Take eight silver skewers, run each skewer through the center of a kidney (which should be split partly open), roll them in breadcrumbs and broil them over a moderate fire for about five minutes on either side. Place them on a very hot dish on which has been previously poured one-half pint of hot Colbert sauce, garnish with croutons of fried bread, and serve.
Three linked dishes from the Waldorf's lamb service: a roast haunch with a breadcrumb finish, and two treatments of lambs' kidneys. The language assumes a butcher who will cut to order and a cook who knows the classical sauces by name.
- What a haunch isA haunch of lamb is the leg with a length of the loin still attached, so a good deal heavier than a plain leg; "fold the loan underneath" is a typesetter's slip for the loin, which is tucked under the leg and skewered so the joint roasts evenly. Few supermarkets carry it, but a butcher will cut one from a whole side. A plain bone-in leg, 5-7 lb, behaves the same way in the oven.
- Oven temperatureA "hot oven" in books of this date is generally taken as somewhere around 400-450F. Modern practice is to start at that heat for 20 minutes to set the surface, then drop to 325-350F for the balance, or the outer inch overcooks before the centre is done.
- DonenessThe original gives no time or test. Roast to an internal temperature of 130-135F at the thickest point for pink lamb, reading well clear of the bone, and rest the joint 20 minutes before carving. A 6 lb leg takes roughly 1 1/2 hours by this method.
- The crumb finishSprinkling stale breadcrumbs on and basting with butter near the end is a browning device, not a coating. Do it in the last 15-20 minutes only, and use dry crumbs rather than fresh, which go soggy in the butter and pan drippings.
- The ruffleA paper frill tied over the trimmed shank bone, purely for carving and presentation. Entirely optional now, though it does give the carver something to hold.
- Kidney timingThis is the hinge of both kidney dishes. Five minutes a side over a moderate fire will leave lambs' kidneys grey, firm and faintly bitter. They want 2-3 minutes a side over high heat and should still be rosy inside; the boiling-water dip is only to firm the surface for skinning, so keep it to a few seconds.
- Preparing kidneysAfter skinning, snip out the pale core of gristle at the hinge, which the recipe assumes you know to do. The skewer run crosswise keeps the butterflied kidney flat so it does not curl on the grill; a metal or soaked bamboo skewer serves as well as the Waldorf's silver ones.
- Salt in the Colbert versionA full tablespoon of salt for eight or nine kidneys is heavy by current taste. Start with a teaspoon and adjust.
- Sweet oil and the sauces"Sweet oil" is olive oil. Maitre d'hotel butter is softened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Colbert sauce is a meat glaze or reduced demi-glace finished with butter, lemon and chopped tarragon; both are made separately and are not given here.
- YieldA haunch of this size serves 8-10; the kidney dishes give eight or nine kidneys, which is a first course for four.
Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maitre d'hotel whose name carried the Waldorf's kitchen into print in 1896, was writing for hotel cooks and ambitious households at a moment when a large bone-in roast still anchored the dinner table and the classical French repertoire supplied its accompaniments. The pairing of roast lamb with mint sauce is an English convention, generally traced to the long habit of serving sharp, vinegar-based sauces with fatty meats; its presence beside a Colbert sauce and a maitre d'hotel butter on the same page shows how freely the grand American hotels mixed English joint-cookery with Escoffier-era French garnishes. The kidney dishes, dressed up with silver skewers and a named sauce and sent out as a course in their own right, point to a kitchen working from whole carcasses rather than from cuts.