No. 1586

Breast of Mutton Stuffed—Tomato Andalouse Sauce

Poitrine de Mouton Farcie Sauce Tomate a l'Andalouse

Remove the bony part of a breast of mutton over the tendons open on the straight edge in such a way as to form a pocket and fill this with some of the following stuffing; sew it up and braise the meat in a mirepoix stock (No, 419); when cooked dress glaze and cover with part of the stock reduced to the consistency of half-glaze; serve a tomato Andalouse sauce (No. 550) separately.

For the Stuffing.—Chop up finely half a pound of lean, sinewless pork with half a pound of bacon, add to it half a pound of soaked and well pressed bread-crumbs. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, chopped onion and a bit of garlic, both of these lightly fried in butter and finish with chopped parsley and two whole eggs.

← No. 1585 Breast of Mutton Plain Mutton No. 1587 Breast, Tendon and Shoulder of Mutton, Navar →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot always going and a numbered sauce book at hand; the two cross-references do most of the work here. The dish is a cheap cut turned into a company piece by long, gentle braising, and the one thing that will spoil it is heat that is too high.

Braise low and slowMutton breast is fat and connective tissue held together by thin muscle, and it wants a long, gentle braise, on the order of two and a half to three hours at a bare simmer; in an oven, a moderate 300-325F will hold that. Ranhofer specifies neither time nor temperature. A hard simmer tightens the meat around the stuffing and squeezes it out through the seam.
Mirepoix stock (No. 419)Ranhofer's mirepoix is broadly diced carrot, onion and celery with raw ham or bacon and herbs, moistened with wine and stock; No. 419 gives his proportions. A quart of good brown stock with those vegetables and a glass of white wine gives a similar result; the meat should sit about two-thirds submerged.
Tomato Andalouse (No. 550)An Andalouse sauce here is a tomato sauce finished with sweet Spanish peppers; see No. 550 for how Ranhofer prepares them. Any well-reduced tomato sauce with roasted red pepper puree stirred through will stand in. It is served separately, not poured over, as the recipe directs.
Buying the cutMutton, meaning older sheep (commonly reckoned over a year, in older usage over two), is hard to find in the United States outside specialist and halal butchers; a 3-4 lb breast of lamb behaves much the same way and cooks a little faster. Ask the butcher to remove the breastbone and rib tips but leave the flap whole so the pocket holds.
Making the pocketCut along the thicker straight edge between the meat and the layer of tendon and fat, working the knife in flat to open a cavity without piercing either face. Sew with butcher's twine in a running stitch and leave the stuffing slack, since bread and egg swell.
The stuffing, in plain termsEqual weights of lean pork, bacon and soaked bread, all half a pound, bound with two eggs. Soak the crumbs in milk or water and wring them out hard; wet panade will steam the forcemeat loose. Onion and garlic must be softened in butter first and cooled before they go in.
Glazing"Dress, glaze and cover" means lifting the joint out, brushing it with reduced braising liquid and setting it under high heat or in a hot oven for a few minutes until it shines. Strain the rest of the liquid, skim the considerable fat, and reduce it until it coats a spoon.
YieldA stuffed lamb breast of this size serves four to six. Rest it 15 minutes before cutting, and slice across the seam with a sharp knife so the forcemeat stays with the meat.

A Little History

This is No. 1586 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows what a French-trained kitchen did with the cuts nobody wanted. Breast of mutton is thin, fatty and tough, and the standard treatment across Europe was to bone it, stuff the resulting pocket with a pork forcemeat bound with soaked bread, and braise it until the collagen gave way — the same logic behind stuffed veal breast and the Provencal poitrine d'agneau farcie. "A l'andalouse" in nineteenth-century French cookery generally signals sweet peppers, tomato, or both, an allusion to Spanish rather than strictly Andalusian cooking. That mutton dominates this section at all is a period marker: American and British eaters of the 1890s bought mature sheep as a matter of course, and the near-total shift to young lamb came later.