Home › Left-Over Lamb and Mutton › Sliced Lamb with Olive Sauce
Sliced Lamb with Olive Sauce
2 tablespoonfuls of 1/2 teaspoonfuls of salt 1/8 teaspoonful of pep- Have ready two dozen medium-sized olives that have been cooked in boiling water thirty minutes and then stoned. 2 4 tablespoonfuls of teaspoonfuls of salt minced onion tablespoonfuls of butter teaspoonful of pepper 2 cups hot stock 4 tablespoonfuls of flour Brown the onion lightly in the butter, add the flour and seasonings, and cook until bubbling, then add two cups of stock-made from the bones of the roast and odds and ends of meat and cook and stir until thick and smooth. Then add the olives. Season thin slices of cold roast lamb with salt and pepper, and add to the sauce. Simmer gently five minutes. When ready to serve, add one tablespoonful of lemon-juice. Pour on a hot platter and garnish with hominy balls (see page 133). Lamb, Turkish Style Brown a small onion and one-third cup of wellwashed rice in butter or beef drippings. Add one cup of stewed tomatoes, one cup of lamb or mutton cut in squares, four tablespoonfuls of minced carrot, one teaspoonful of horseradish, salt and pepper to taste. Make quite moist with gravy or hot water. Cover closely and simmer until the rice is soft and the water absorbed. If the mixture should become too dry, add more wetting. Serve on a hot platter and garnish with triangles of nicely browned toast. This dish in Turkey is called Pilau.
Two dishes run together here, both built on cold roast lamb. The ingredient list for the olive sauce has been scrambled in the original setting, so read the method rather than the column of numbers.
- The garbled ingredient listTwo columns of type have collapsed into one line. The method calls for onion, butter, flour, seasoning and two cups of stock; only the flour (4 tablespoonfuls) and the stock (2 cups) can be read off with any confidence. The quantities of butter, salt, pepper and minced onion cannot be recovered from this text. Equal butter to flour gives a standard roux for two cups of liquid; season to taste.
- Boiling the olivesThirty minutes in boiling water is not explained in the recipe, but would have mellowed the brine of the barrelled and canned olives of the day. Modern jarred green olives need a rinse and perhaps a five-minute soak in hot water, no more, or they will collapse into the sauce.
- Stone them after, not beforeThe instruction to cook whole and then stone is worth keeping, since pitted olives soften and go mushy. If using pitted olives, add them at the end as written and do not simmer them long.
- The stock is the dishTwo cups made from the roast bones and trimmings is what separates this from flour gravy. A good unsalted or low-sodium broth substitutes, but taste before salting, since the olives and lemon both carry salt and acid.
- Do not cook the lamb againThe meat is already roasted. Five minutes at a bare simmer is enough to heat thin slices through; longer and cold roast lamb turns grey and stringy. Slice thin, across the grain.
- Lemon juice lastAdded at the very end, when ready to serve, as instructed, so the acid stays bright. Stirred in early it flattens out and can make the flour-thickened sauce taste dull.
- Hominy ballsThe cross-reference is to a separate recipe on page 133 of the book, not reproduced here; recipes of that name are generally stiff cooked hominy shaped and fried. Polenta cakes or plain buttered grits serve the same purpose as a starch against the salty sauce.
- The pilauOne-third cup rice with a cup of tomatoes plus gravy or water will take roughly 18 to 20 minutes covered on low heat. The teaspoonful of horseradish is unusual; a pinch of cinnamon or allspice would be closer to the spicing of a Turkish pilav.
- YieldNeither dish gives a yield; each will serve roughly two to four, depending on how much lamb the roast left behind.
Books of left-overs were a distinct genre in American and British publishing from the 1890s through the 1920s, when a large roast joint was the normal Sunday centrepiece for a middle-class household and Monday and Tuesday had to be built out of what remained. The olive sauce here is a brown sauce sharpened with olives and lemon, scaled down to a household roux and whatever stock the cook could boil from the bones. The second dish is more revealing: labelling a tomato-and-rice braise "Turkish Style" and noting that "this dish in Turkey is called Pilau" reflects how loosely Anglo-American cookbooks of the period used the word, which reached English through Persian and Turkish pilav and was applied to almost any seasoned rice. The horseradish is a purely Western substitution.