No. 1719

Minced Lamb a la Rivera

Emince d'Agneau a la Rivera

Minces are generally made with cooked meats; cut quarter inch thick slices from the kernel part of a cold roast leg of lamb, pare them into rounds two and a half inches in diameter, range them in a sautoir pouring over a few spoonfuls of half-glaze sauce (No. 413), clear gravy (No. 404), and port wine, heating it all without boiling. Cut some sour apples into quarters, peel and remove the cores and seeds; lay them in a sautoir, besprinkle with sugar and cook them in a slack oven till done. Dress the minced meat in a circle with the apples in the center, and pour the port wine sauce over.

← No. 1718 Loin of Lamb with Sauted Tomatoes Lamb No. 1720 Minion Fillets of Lamb a la Benoist →

For the Modern Kitchen

A reheating dish for leftover roast lamb, from Charles Ranhofer's Delmonico's repertoire. Almost everything depends on keeping the meat below a simmer.

The hinge: never boilThe lamb is already cooked, so the sauce is only warming it through. Ranhofer says only "without boiling"; keeping the pan well below a simmer, for a few minutes at most, is the sense of it. Held too hot the slices tighten and dry.
"Kernel part"The noix, the thick inner muscle of the leg, the part most likely to yield clean rounds of two and a half inches. A cutter or a small tumbler does the paring.
SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan, close to a modern wide saute pan. It is used here for both the lamb and the apples, so a pan that can go on the stove and into the oven is convenient.
Half-glaze and clear gravyNo. 413 is the half-glaze, i.e. demi-glace; No. 404 is Ranhofer's clear gravy, a clarified brown stock. Good bought demi-glace or a reduced brown stock stands in. Figure roughly 1/2 cup demi-glace, 1/4 cup stock and 1/4 cup port for four servings — Ranhofer gives no quantities at all, so this is a starting proportion rather than a conversion.
Slack ovenA low oven; 300F or lower is the usual modern reading. The apple quarters are meant to hold their shape and candy lightly in their own juice, so cook them until done rather than to a clock, and stop before they collapse into sauce.
Sour applesA firm tart cooking apple — Bramley, Granny Smith, Northern Spy. Modern dessert apples are bred sweet and will need much less sugar, if any; a light dusting is all the recipe intends.
Yield and serviceService -- The arrangement is the recipe's own: a ring of the meat rounds with the apples heaped in the centre, and the port wine sauce poured over.

A Little History

Emince is simply French for finely sliced, and the technique belongs to the professional kitchen's economy rather than to any regional tradition: a restaurant that roasted whole legs of lamb for the dining room needed a respectable second life for the cold remainder, and minces of this kind are made with already-cooked meat. What makes this one look like a composed dish rather than leftovers is the treatment: sliced, trimmed into uniform rounds, arranged in a circle, sauced with demi-glace and port. The pairing of lamb with baked tart apple is the sort of Anglo-French crossover often noted on nineteenth-century American menus. The suffix a la Rivera is unexplained in the book; Ranhofer, like his contemporaries, attached names of patrons, staff and places to variations freely, and many of them can no longer be traced to anyone in particular.