No. 1695

Epigrammes of Lamb, Ancient Style

Epigrammes d'Agneau a l'Ancienne

Braise two breasts of lamb (No. 1694); drain and take out the bones reserving them to use later for imitating handles; let the meat get cold under a weight to reduce to half an inch, then pare nicely by suppressing the skin and cutting them up into half heart-shapes, season with salt and pepper and cover over entirely with Duxelle sauce (No. 461). When cold bread-crumb them in eggs. Scrape the reserve bones, sharpen one end and insert one in each half heart. For eight pieces of breast have eight covered cutlets, pare them nicely, season and broil or fry, then glaze them over with a brush. Brown the breasts in a sautoir with very hot clarified butter, when done drain and decorate the handles with frills (No. 10), also those of the cutlets and dress them in a circle, intercalating the breasts with the cutlets. Reduce some white wine veloute (No. 415) with mushroom broth and add to it a garnishing of quenelles and mushrooms; range this garnishing in the middle of the circle and decorate around with small glazed lamb's sweebreads.

← No. 1694 Epigrammes of Lamb a la Toulouse Lamb No. 1696 Lamb Fries, Cream Horseradish or Tomato Sauc →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stockpot already going, and this entry leans on four other numbered recipes. Read it as an assembly plan: the real work is braising and pressing the breasts a day ahead.

The hinge: press the breasts coldBoned breast is loose, fatty and impossible to cut cleanly while warm. Weight it flat between two trays in the refrigerator overnight until it is a compact half-inch slab; only then will it pare into clean half-hearts and hold its shape in the pan.
What an epigramme is hereTwo preparations of lamb served on one dish: braised, crumbed and fried breast alternating with plain grilled cutlets. It is not a sauce or a garnish, and nothing about it is literary.
The cross-referencesThe cross-references — No. 1694 is the neighbouring epigramme recipe (Epigrammes of Lamb à la Toulouse), which supplies the braise; No. 461 duxelles sauce (a thick mushroom-shallot reduction, stiff enough to coat when cold), No. 415 a white-wine velouté, No. 10 the paper cutlet frills. Any modern equivalent of these will serve; the duxelles must be thick or the breading will not stay put.
Braising temperatureBraising — the entry gives no temperature or time; braise covered and slow until the rib bones pull free clean. Those bones are what get scraped, pointed and pushed back into the pressed meat as handles.
Bone handles are optionalThe sharpened rib inserted into each half-heart is Victorian table theatre, meant to make breast look like a cutlet. It carries no flavour and can be left out entirely; if you keep it, the frills are paper and come off before eating.
“Bread-crumb them in eggs”“Bread-crumb them in eggs” — egg wash, then fine dry crumbs, over the duxelles coating. That coating must be fully chilled and firm first or it will slide off in the sautoir.
Sautoir and clarified butterA sautoir is a straight-sided sauté pan. Clarified butter is specified because whole butter burns before the crumb colours; ghee or a butter-oil mix does the same job at 350F.
GlazingTo “glaze over with a brush” means painting the grilled cutlets with heavily reduced lamb or veal stock for shine, not with sugar or with the velouté.
SweetbreadsLamb sweetbreads need soaking in several changes of cold water, blanching, trimming of membrane and pressing before they are glazed. Order them ahead; they are not a supermarket item.
YieldEight breast pieces and eight cutlets serve eight as a course, or four generously as a main. The velouté with quenelles and mushrooms goes in the centre of the ring, not over the meat.

A Little History

Épigramme d'agneau is one of the oldest surviving jokes in French cookery, and the joke has long since worn away. The name is generally traced to eighteenth-century France and an anecdote — told in many versions and documented in none — about a hostess who heard epigrams praised at another table and instructed her cook to send some up. Whatever the origin, by the nineteenth century the term had a fixed technical meaning: breast of lamb braised, pressed, crumbed and fried, plated alongside grilled cutlets so that one animal appeared in two textures. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for more than thirty years, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete working system — some 3,500 numbered recipes that refer to one another rather than repeat themselves — and this entry is a good example of the method. Calling it à l'ancienne in 1894 signalled that the dish was already old-fashioned then: the false bone handles and paper frills belonged to a style of service that survived at Delmonico's, perhaps because its customers expected it.