No. 1718

Loin of Lamb with Sauted Tomatoes

Longe d'Agneau aux Tomates Sautees

Proceed exactly as for German style (No. 1717), and when cold and the slices are pared heart-shaped, cover each piece with cooked fine herbs (No. 385), eggs and bread-crumbs and fry to a nice color; dress in a circle and fill the inside empty space with split and peeled tomatoes that have been pressed and fried in butter with shallots and seasoned with salt, pepper and chopped parsley. Serve a tomato sauce (No. 549) and half-glaze (No. 400) separately.

← No. 1717 Loin of Yearling Lamb, German Style Lamb No. 1719 Minced Lamb a la Rivera →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a second-day dish built on the braised loin of No. 1717: the cooked meat is chilled firm, cut into shapes, breaded and fried. Nearly everything that matters happens before the breading.

The hinge: chill it hardThe loin must be thoroughly cold before it is pared and sliced. Warm meat will not hold a clean heart shape and the coating will slide off in the fat.
The cross-references, decodedNo. 385 fines herbes cuites is a duxelles-type paste of chopped mushrooms, shallot and parsley cooked down in butter until dry. No. 400 half-glaze is demi-glace: brown sauce reduced with stock until it coats. No. 549 is a plain tomato sauce. Any competent modern versions of these three will serve.
Breading order"Eggs and bread-crumbs" means the standard sequence — the herb paste spread thin on the slice, then beaten egg, then fine dry crumbs, pressed on. Chill the breaded pieces again for twenty minutes so the crust sets before frying.
FryingClarified butter or a neutral oil at about 350F, two to three minutes a side. The lamb is already cooked; the object is colour and a hot centre, not further cooking.
The tomatoes"Split and peeled... that have been pressed" means halved, skinned, and the seeds and juice squeezed out, so they fry rather than stew. Ripe plum tomatoes work best; cook them cut-side down in butter with minced shallot over fairly brisk heat.
Yield and serviceRanhofer intends the ring of lamb with tomatoes heaped in the centre, and specifies the two sauces served separately rather than poured over, which would soften the crust. He gives no yield.
"Yearling lamb"The base recipe specifies a yearling, which today would be sold as hogget or young mutton. An ordinary loin of lamb behaves much the same way in this preparation.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summation of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its structure explains the shape of this entry: the book is a numbered system in which each dish points to others, so a recipe can be written in four lines because the sauces and garnishes already have addresses elsewhere in the volume. The dish itself belongs to a large nineteenth-century family of réchauffés — cold cooked meat cut to shape, breaded and fried — which restaurant kitchens depended on to turn yesterday's braise into a plated course rather than a leftover. The heart-shaped paring is characteristic of the period's insistence that the trimming be as deliberate as the cooking, and the ring of meat filled with garnish is the standard service Ranhofer calls for again and again. Tomatoes fried in butter with shallot appear throughout the book, a sign of how thoroughly the tomato had settled into fine American cooking by the 1890s after a hesitant start earlier in the century.