No. 1739

Hind Saddle of Lamb a la Chanceliere

Selle d'Agneau a la Chanceliere

Prepare the saddle the same as for the turnips (No. 1745), and when nearly cooked drain, and pare nicely and evenly; place in a baking pan, cover the top with a coating of beaten eggs, and dredge fine bread-crumbs over, pour on some melted butter and brown in a hot oven. Strain the broth, reduce it to a half-glaze and add to this a little tomato sauce (No. 549) and bechamel (No. 409); serve this with the saddle. Line some tartlet molds with fragments of very thin puff paste (No. 146), fill them with well-cooked fat rice stirred in with some bechamel (No. 409) and seasoned with salt and nutmeg and the well-beaten egg-whites; fifteen minutes before serving the meat set these in the oven and when they are cooked range them around the saddle and serve.

← No. 1738 Hind Saddle of Lamb, a la Brighton Lamb No. 1740 Hind Saddle of Lamb a la Florentine →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in shorthand for a professional brigade: this entry is really an assembly note that depends on four other numbered recipes. Read it as a braised saddle, glazed and crumbed, with rice tartlets around the dish.

The cross-references are the recipeNo. 1745 supplies the actual cooking method (the mention of straining the broth implies a braise, but the details are on that page, not this one), 549 is tomato sauce, 409 bechamel, 146 puff paste. Without them the page gives you a finish but no cooking. Substitute your own braise and sauces if you are not working from the whole book.
What a hind saddle isThe saddle is the unsplit loin section from both sides of the backbone, here the rear half. A whole lamb saddle will generally run somewhere around 4-6 lb bone-in and serve six or so; most butchers will need it ordered, and will trim the flaps and remove the kidneys and fell on request.
"Nearly cooked, drain and pare"The braise stops short of done because the meat goes back into a hot oven to brown. Ranhofer's braised saddle would have been cooked through; if you want the finished meat pink you will have to pull it well short and let the crumbing stage carry it up. "Pare nicely" means trim the braised surface flat and even so the crumb coating sits smoothly.
Browning temperature"Hot oven" is undefined in the text; in modern terms take it as roughly 425-450F. The egg wash, crumbs and butter need eight to twelve minutes at that heat; watch it, since the crumbs colour well before the meat gains much more temperature.
Half-glazeReducing the strained braising liquid to a half-glaze means boiling it down by roughly half, until it is thickened and glossy but short of a true glaze. Salt only after reducing. The tomato sauce and bechamel are added in small quantity, as tinting and body, not as a bulk sauce -- the recipe specifies "a little".
The rice tartlets"Fat rice" is rice cooked in stock with butter until soft, bound with bechamel, seasoned with salt and nutmeg, then lightened with stiffly beaten whites folded in at the last moment. Fold gently and bake at once or they collapse. Fifteen minutes at 400F suits small tartlet shells.
Puff paste "fragments"Ranhofer means offcuts and trimmings from other work, rolled very thin. Trimmings puff unevenly, which is fine for a lined mold; all-butter frozen puff pastry, rolled to about 1/8 inch, does the job.
Timing the assemblyWork backwards: crumb and brown the saddle while the tartlets bake, finish the sauce during the rest, and let the meat sit ten minutes before carving. The saddle is carved in long strips parallel to the backbone, then the fillets from underneath.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially that restaurant's working repertoire set down in thousands of numbered entries. The name a la chanceliere - "in the chancellor's manner" - belongs to the nineteenth-century French habit of tagging garnishes with titles of office and nobility; like a la financiere or a la royale, it signals a rich, formally arranged dish rather than any documented connection to a particular chancellor. The structure here is pure Carême-descended grande cuisine: a large joint braised, glazed, crumbed and browned, then ringed with identical small pastry cases as edible garnish, the whole thing built to be carried whole to a table and carved in view of the guests. That the recipe assumes you already have puff paste trimmings lying about tells you it was written for a brigade with a pastry station, not for a household cook.