No. 1664

Breast of Lamb with Turnips

Poitrine d'Agneau aux Navets

Remove the skin covering the breast, also the gristle bone from two breasts of lamb; cut them up into three-quarters of an inch square pieces and fry them till brown in butter, then drain off the fat and moisten with a pint of stock (No. 194a); boil and reduce to a glaze; remoisten a very little at the time, repeating this several times while cooking, and three-quarters of an hour before serving, drain off the meats, pare and return them to the saucepan; strain the sauce over and add some turned turnips fried in butter, and continue the cooking, season properly. When the meats and turnips are well done and fallen to a glaze, dress the turnips around.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A braise built by repeated glazing rather than by one long simmer in liquid. The hinge is patience with the moistening: small additions of stock, each one cooked down to a glaze, are what build the lacquered coating on the meat.

The cutBreast of lamb is the fatty belly section, sold today as riblets or lamb breast, sometimes only by special order. Two breasts give roughly 3-4 lb bone-in and will serve four; the meat is rich, so portions are modest.
Stock No. 194aRanhofer's cross-reference is to one of his stocks from the stock chapter; a good unsalted brown or veal stock is the substitute. Avoid anything pre-salted, since the liquid is reduced to a glaze several times over and salt concentrates each round.
"Reduce to a glaze"Cook the pint of stock down until it films the pan and the meat, then add more stock a few spoonfuls at a time and repeat. This is glazing, not stewing, and it is why the finished dish is coated rather than soupy. Keep the heat at a bare simmer and stir often as the liquid gets thick, or the sugars in the stock will scorch.
"Pare" the meatsThree-quarters of an hour before serving, the pieces come out and are trimmed: pull any small bones and cartilage that have loosened, and cut away excess soft fat. Breast is very fatty, and this second trim is what keeps the finished dish from being greasy.
Skimming the fatThe instruction to drain the fat after browning is not optional with this cut. Skim again each time you drain off the meat, or before the final reduction chill the sauce briefly and lift the fat off.
Turned turnips"Turned" means cut into small even barrel or olive shapes, seven-sided in classic practice, so they cook uniformly and look neat when dressed around the platter. Trimming them roughly the same size matters more than the faceting. Use white turnips, not rutabaga, which is sweeter and coarser.
TimingBreast wants about 1 1/2 to 2 hours of gentle cooking in total before it is tender; the turnips join for the last 45 minutes as written and will be soft and glazed by the end. If your turnips are large, cut them smaller rather than adding them earlier.
SeasoningNo salt or pepper is specified until the end, where the recipe simply says 'season properly'. That suits all the reduction: season at the final stage, taste the glaze, and finish with pepper.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) set down the repertoire he cooked at Delmonico's in New York, and this dish follows a French model, poitrine d'agneau aux navets, cousin to the better-known navarin of lamb. Breast is one of the cheapest parts of the animal, fatty and full of connective tissue, and turnips were a traditional partner, their slight bitterness and their capacity to absorb fat working against the richness. Ranhofer's version is characteristic of the book in taking a thrifty braise and giving it restaurant discipline: the meat is glazed in stages rather than simply stewed, trimmed a second time mid-cooking, and the turnips are turned to uniform shapes and arranged around the dish. It reflects a period when a grand American kitchen still worked its way through the whole carcass, and when the difference between a household dish and a hotel dish lay largely in the labor spent on it.