No. 1742

Hind Saddle of Lamb a la Sanford

Selle d'Agneau a la Sanford

Prepare and cook the meat the same as for Florentine (No. 1740), but instead of artichoke bottoms have a garnishing of croustades made of puff paste parings (No. 146) and filled with a Sanford apple sauce (No. 588) pushed in through a pocket, lay on top of each a paste cover made by having three thin flats of paste of different dimensions the smallest one on top, serve separately some rich gravy (No. 404).

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is one of Ranhofer's shorthand entries: the meat is cooked exactly as in the preceding recipe and only the garnish changes. To cook it you need to reconstruct three cross-references — the Florentine saddle, the apple sauce, and the gravy — so read it as a garnishing instruction rather than a standalone recipe.

What a hind saddle isThe double loin, both sides still joined at the backbone; in nineteenth-century American butchery the hind saddle could also take in the hips. It is a large joint, enough for a table of eight or more, though the weight varies with the animal. No supermarket carries it; order it from a butcher, unsplit. A pair of tied loin roasts is the nearest substitute and behaves much the same in the oven.
The roast itselfThe cooking is not given here; the recipe sends you to No. 1740 for it. For a modern oven, start at 450F for 15 minutes, drop to 350F, and pull the meat at 130-135F at the thickest part of the loin for pink lamb, then rest 20 minutes. Nineteenth-century roasting would generally have taken it further; lamb loin at 160F is dry and there is nothing to gain by it.
Puff paste paringsThe trimmings left from cutting out other pastry shapes. Re-rolled scraps rise unevenly, which is why they were relegated to garnish cases — for a batch of croustades, stack the offcuts rather than kneading them, or use one sheet of all-butter frozen puff pastry cut into cases.
"Pushed in through a pocket"'Pocket' is Ranhofer's word for a pastry bag: the sauce is forced into the case with a bag rather than spooned in. The recipe does not say where the case is filled; fill it so the shell stays intact and the lid sits flat.
Sanford apple sauceNo. 588 is not reproduced here. Whatever its exact composition, it has to be stiff enough to hold its shape once forced into the case, so reduce it hard. Any firm cooking apple works; 'Sanford' looks to be the dedication attached to the dish rather than a variety you need to hunt down.
The three-flat lidCut three rounds of paste in descending sizes, stack them smallest on top, and bake separately on a flat sheet so they keep their tiers. They are set on the filled cases at the moment of serving; assembled early, the steam from the apple softens them.
The gravyNo. 404 is not reproduced here; the recipe asks only for 'rich gravy'. Serve it in a boat, not over the platter, or the pastry cases collapse — which is what the recipe's 'serve separately' is protecting.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it is organized like a professional reference rather than a domestic cookbook: hundreds of numbered preparations, each pointing to others, so that a kitchen brigade could assemble a dish from parts already in production. This entry is a pure example — the roast is borrowed wholesale from the Florentine saddle two numbers earlier, and the only new work is the garnish. Restaurant menus of the period routinely attached surnames to dishes, some for composers and performers (the neighbouring No. 1741 is a la Paganini), many for regular patrons of the house; who Sanford was is not documented in the book itself, and the attribution is best treated as one of Delmonico's countless personal dedications. The apple-with-lamb pairing, familiar now as a pork or goose accompaniment, is often said to have been common in hotel kitchens for rich roast meats, and setting it inside tiered puff-paste cases is characteristic of the era's taste for garnishes that were architecture as much as food.