No. 1741

Hind Saddle of Lamb a la Paganini

Selle d'Agneau a la Paganini

Have the saddle prepared and cooked the same as for Florentine (No. 1740); dress the meat and garnish around with slices of foies-gras intercalated with slices of truffles; cover these with a supreme sauce (No. 547) and lay on top partridge quenelles decorated with truffles. The saddle may be garnished with skewers thrust into it composed of double cocks'-combs and glazed truffles. Serve a sauce-bowl of supreme sauce at the same time as the saddle.

← No. 1740 Hind Saddle of Lamb a la Florentine Lamb No. 1742 Hind Saddle of Lamb a la Sanford →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is an assembly and garnish instruction rather than a standalone recipe: the cooking is all in No. 1740, and Ranhofer assumes you have a supreme sauce, quenelle forcemeat and a truffle supply already at hand. Read it as a plating scheme for a roast saddle.

You need the cross-referencesNothing here tells you how to cook the lamb. The saddle itself, its seasoning and its roasting are in No. 1740 (Florentine), and the sauce in No. 547. Without both, this page is only the garnish.
What a hind saddle isThe hind saddle is the unsplit double loin with both tenderloins, cut across the back and taken forward from the hip. Ask a butcher for a saddle of lamb, bone in, chine cracked; a 4-5 lb saddle serves six to eight as a centrepiece course.
Roasting the saddleRanhofer gives no temperatures here or in No. 1740. As modern guidance, a saddle wants high heat to colour and then moderate heat to finish: start around 450F, drop to 350F, and pull the meat at 130-135F internal for pink. Nineteenth-century kitchens generally took lamb further than this; at 150F the loin is dry and the dish loses its point.
Rest before you dress itBecause everything is laid on and around the meat, the saddle must rest 15-20 minutes off the heat before carving or arranging, or the plate floods with juice and thins the supreme sauce.
Foies-grasHe means whole cooked foie gras, sliced cold and warmed by the sauce, not a mousse or pâté spread. A terrine-style bloc, cut in neat slices, is the closest supermarket equivalent.
TrufflesRanhofer does not specify the kind, but in this context it would ordinarily be the black winter truffle, used both sliced between the foie gras and as glazed pieces on the skewers. Preserved truffle peelings will not hold a slice; if fresh truffle is out of reach, the decoration is the part to drop.
Cocks'-combsDouble cocks'-combs are the blanched, peeled combs of the bird, once a standard garnish item and now effectively unobtainable outside specialist butchery. They were ornamental, mounted on hâtelets (decorative skewers) for height, and the dish is complete without them.
Partridge quenellesThese are small poached dumplings of pounded partridge, cream and panade, shaped with two spoons and poached gently in barely trembling stock. They must not boil or they break up; drain them and set them on the meat at the last moment.
Sauce, twiceSupreme sauce is a chicken velouté finished with cream and butter. Some coats the garnish, and a boat of it goes to table separately, so make roughly half again as much as the coating needs and keep it below a simmer once the cream is in.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of what he cooked in thirty-odd years at Delmonico's in New York, and it is built as a system: variations on a roast saddle distinguished largely by their garnish and sauce. Naming a garnish for a performer was standard Franco-American restaurant practice of the period, and the violinist Niccolo Paganini, who died in 1840, was exactly the sort of figure whose fame outlived him well enough to sell a dish; the attribution here, as with most such names, is honorific rather than documented, and there is no suggestion Paganini ever ate it. What the entry really shows is the logic of high service in the 1880s and 1890s -- foie gras, truffles, quenelles and cocks'-combs assembled in tiers on and around the meat, with skewers to give the platter height for its journey through the dining room. That kind of vertical, ornamental garnishing largely disappeared with the shift to plated service in the twentieth century, which is why a dish like this now reads as a piece of stagecraft as much as a recipe.