No. 1734

Rack of Lamb with Artichokes—Sauted

Carre d'Agneau Saute aux Artichauts

Cut short the breasts of two racks of lamb; take out the chine bones and put the meats into a sauteing-pan with melted fat pork and a bunch of parsley containing aromatics and a clove of garlic, season and fry over a brisk fire. Aside from this cut eight small, slightly pared, tender and raw artichoke bottoms in two; lay them in another saute pan with some oil, then season and fry them over a moderate fire. As soon as the lamb is nicely done, drain off the fat, pour over half a bottleful of white wine and let reduce to a glaze; baste the meats with a little half-glaze sauce, (No. 413) and take them from the fire to lay on a hot dish; suppress the garnished parsley and surround the meats with the artichokes.

← No. 1733 Rack of Lamb, Castillane Sauce—Broiled Lamb No. 1735 Rack of Lamb with Puree of Split Peas-Larded →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a brigade kitchen: someone else has boned the racks, someone else has a pot of half-glaze on the stove. Stripped of that, this is a two-pan dish — lamb browned and glazed with wine in one, artichoke bottoms fried in the other.

The hinge: brown hard, then glazeThe wine goes in only after the fat is poured off, and it must reduce all the way to a syrupy film that coats the meat. Adding it early, or leaving it loose, gives you braised lamb in thin wine rather than a lacquered rack.
"Cut short the breasts" and "take out the chine bones"Trimming back the breast flap and removing the backbone so the rack can be carved between the ribs. Ask a butcher for two racks, chined and with the breasts cut short; a rack will generally serve two to three, so the dish feeds four to six.
Melted fat porkRendered fatback or salt pork fat. Lard, clarified butter, or a neutral oil with a knob of butter all behave the same way here; if you use salt pork, hold back on the seasoning until you taste.
Half a bottleful of white wineRoughly 1 1/2 cups (about 375 ml) of dry white. Nineteenth-century bottles varied, but half a standard modern bottle is the right order of magnitude.
Half-glaze sauce, No. 413Ranhofer's demi-glace — brown espagnole sauce reduced with stock. A well-reduced veal or lamb stock, or a good commercial demi-glace loosened with stock, stands in. It is a basting spoonful, not a pool.
Raw artichoke bottomsTrim eight bottoms from large globe artichokes, scoop the chokes, and hold them in acidulated water until the moment they hit the pan or they will blacken. Halved and fried over moderate heat they take 12–18 minutes and should be tender at the centre before the lamb is rested.
The parsley bundle"a bunch of parsley containing aromatics and a clove of garlic" is a bouquet garni; the aromatics are unspecified, though thyme and bay would be the usual choice. "Suppress" simply means fish it out and discard it before serving.
DonenessThe original keeps the racks in the pan from start to finish. If a brisk fire will not cook a whole rack through evenly on your stovetop, brown it in the pan and then finish it in a 400F oven to an internal 130-135F for medium-rare, resting ten minutes before carving.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his service manual — some 3,500 numbered recipes cross-referenced to each other, which is why the half-glaze arrives here as a bare number rather than a method. The dish itself is unremarkable French restaurant cooking of the period: a carré sautéed and glazed with wine, garnished with artichoke bottoms, the sort of plate that would have been named for its garnish on a menu written in French for diners who mostly spoke English. Artichoke bottoms turn up often in the book as a garnish, valued for holding their shape and their neat round form on a platter; though the labour of trimming them raw is a reminder that Ranhofer's recipes were written for a kitchen with cheap hands in it.