No. 1729

Neck of Lamb with Cabbage

Collet d'Agneau aux Choux

Cut the neck a little long on the rib side; leave four rib bones on it; bone it all thoroughly, remove the sinewy and fat parts, then season with salt and pepper, stuff with lamb forcemeat made of cold finely chopped lamb, an equal quantity of soaked and pressed out bread-crumbs, fried, chopped onions, minced cooked mushrooms, chopped parsley, chopped up cooked ham and raw eggs. Fill the neck with this, sew up the meat so as to enclose well the stuffing and braise it in a very little stock (No. 194a) for three hours; remove the threads, glaze, dress and surround with cabbage. Strain the stock, add to it a little brown sauce (No. 414), bring it to a boil, skim off the fat carefully and when reduced serve in a sauce-boat.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade, so the cross-references and the unstated steps do the work of a paragraph each. The dish is a boned, stuffed neck braised long and slow, and everything depends on getting the roll tight before it goes in the pot.

The hinge: sew it tightA boned neck is an awkward, uneven sheet of meat, and any gap lets the forcemeat leach out into the braising liquid. Roll it firmly around the stuffing, sew the seam with butcher's twine, then tie the roll crosswise at 1-inch intervals so it holds its shape through three hours of moist heat.
Cutting the neck"Cut the neck a little long on the rib side; leave four rib bones on it" means asking for the neck with the first few rib bones attached, then boning the whole piece out. Any butcher will do this; the bones and trimmings are worth keeping for the braising stock.
Forcemeat proportionsNo quantities are given. Equal weights of cooked chopped lamb and soaked, squeezed bread is the stated ratio; figure roughly 8 oz of each for a neck this size, with a small fried onion, 3-4 oz mushrooms, 2 oz ham, a handful of parsley and one or two eggs to bind. Fry a spoonful and taste before you fill the roll.
The cross-referencesNo. 194 a is Ranhofer's stock; a good unsalted brown veal or lamb stock stands in. No. 414 is the book's brown sauce, of the espagnole type. A well-reduced demi-glace does the same job here.
"A very little stock"This is a braise, not a stew. Liquid should come no more than a third of the way up the roll, so the top glazes while the bottom stews. No cooking vessel or heat level is specified; a low oven, around 325F, holds it steadier than a burner.
Glazing"Glaze" here means brushing the meat with a reduced meat glaze for shine. Reducing a few spoonfuls of the strained braising liquid to a syrup and painting it on gives the same lacquer.
The cabbageNo treatment is specified; the recipe says only to "surround with cabbage." Braised cabbage is the obvious reading: quartered or shredded green cabbage blanched, then braised with a little stock until tender. Cook it separately and arrange it around the sliced roll.
Yield and servingNo yield is given; a stuffed neck with four ribs should serve about four. Rest it ten minutes, snip and pull every thread, then cut into thick slices so each shows a cross-section of forcemeat.

A Little History

The neck is one of the cheapest cuts on the lamb and one of the most tendon-ridden, which is exactly why classical French kitchens boned, stuffed and braised it rather than roasting it. Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York across some three decades (1862-76 and again 1879-96), published The Epicurean in 1894 as a record of that kitchen, and its lamb section runs from truffled minion fillets down through humbler joints like this one. The pairing of a fatty braised cut with cabbage is long established in French provincial cooking; what marks it as restaurant cooking here is the reflex of straining the braising liquid, fortifying it with brown sauce, reducing it and sending it separately in a sauce-boat, rather than simply spooning the pot juices over the meat.