No. 1632

Leg of Mutton a la Lyonnaise—Minced

Emince de Gigot de Mouton a la Lyonnaise

Pare and suppress all the fat from a cold cooked leg of mutton, cut it in slices and fry these in a little butter, season with salt and pepper, parsley and lemon juice, and just when ready to serve pour off the butter and add a piece of meat glaze (No. 402). Dress the meat crown-shaped on a dish. Fry some minced and blanched onions in butter; when a fine golden color, drain off the butter and add some veloute sauce (No. 415) and cream; reduce well and then pour it over the slices, bestrew chopped parsley over and serve very hot.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A leftover dish from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), built on the assumption that a large roast joint went cold in the larder and had to reappear the next day. Lamb stands in for mutton without any other change.

The hinge: the meat is already cookedThe slices only need to be warmed and lightly coloured in butter, a minute or so per side over fairly brisk heat. Cooked mutton or lamb held longer than that turns grey and dry, and no amount of sauce recovers it.
CuttingTrim off every scrap of fat as instructed — cold mutton fat is waxy and unpleasant reheated — and slice thin, no more than about 1/8 inch, across the grain. Thick slices will not heat through in the short time allowed.
Meat glaze (No. 402)Ranhofer's glaze is brown stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A tablespoon of commercial demi-glace concentrate, or your own veal or lamb stock reduced hard, does the same job: it is there for gloss and depth, not volume.
Velouté (No. 415)A white roux loosened with veal or chicken stock and simmered until it coats. About a cup, with two or three tablespoons of cream added and the whole reduced until it clings to the back of a spoon, is right for four servings.
Blanched onionsBlanching the minced onion in boiling water for a couple of minutes before frying pulls out the raw sulphurous edge and lets it colour evenly. Two medium onions, finely chopped, and eight to ten minutes in butter to reach a fine golden colour.
Draining the butterBoth the meat and the onions are drained of their frying butter before the glaze and sauce go in. Skip it and the sauce breaks into a greasy film; it takes seconds and matters.
Dressing crown-shapedThe slices are overlapped in a ring around the edge of a hot platter, sauce poured over, centre left open. A warmed dish is not optional — thin slices of reheated lamb lose their heat almost at once.
YieldAbout 1 1/2 lb of trimmed cooked meat serves four as a main course. Ranhofer gives no quantities in this recipe, as in many of the book's leftover dishes: the amount is whatever the joint left behind.

A Little History

À la lyonnaise means, in practice, onions — the association of Lyon with onions is traditional, and by the nineteenth century the phrase functioned as shorthand on French menus, from potatoes to tripe to this minced mutton. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete professional system, and its many émincés, hashes and croquettes suggest that even a restaurant of that scale found uses for large roasted joints. A leg of mutton served hot on one day could come back the next carved thin, refreshed in butter and masked with velouté — a dish that exists because of the previous day's menu rather than in spite of it. Mutton itself, meaning sheep well over a year old and correspondingly strong in flavour, has become uncommon in American and British butchers since the mid-twentieth century, which is why the recipe now reads as a lamb dish.