No. 1747

Slices of Saddle of Lamb with Puree of Beans

Tranches de Selle d'Agneau a la Puree de Haricots

Cut transversal slices three-quarters of an inch in thickness from a small saddle of lamb; season with salt and fry till done in clarified butter. Dress them in a straight row on a long dish, one piece overlapping the other; surround with a puree of white beans (No. 706) pushed through a pastry bag (Fig. 179). Cover the meats with a half-glaze sauce (No. 413) having some chopped fresh mushrooms added to it, and serve some of the same sauce in a sauce-boat.

← No. 1746 Hind Saddle of Lamb with Gravy—Roasted Lamb No. 1748 Shoulder of Lamb a la Benton →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade that already has demi-glace and bean puree standing by, so the work here is mostly assembly. Sort out the butchery and the sauce first and the dish comes together in twenty minutes.

What the cut actually isA saddle of lamb is the whole unsplit loin, both sides still joined at the backbone. Sliced transversally at three-quarters of an inch you get what a butcher would call double loin chops, or English chops. Ask a butcher for these rather than trying to saw a whole saddle at home; a small saddle should give roughly six to eight slices.
Half-glaze sauceNo. 413 is demi-glace: brown veal stock reduced with espagnole. A good jarred or frozen demi-glace works, or reduce 2 cups of dark veal or beef stock with a splash of Madeira to about 3/4 cup, until it coats a spoon.
Cook the mushrooms"Chopped fresh mushrooms added to it" almost certainly assumes they cook in or before the sauce rather than going in raw at the last moment. Sweat 4 oz of finely chopped mushrooms in butter until they stop giving off water, then fold them into the sauce and hold it warm; added raw, they will release water into the sauce.
Clarified butterUsed because the milk solids in whole butter scorch at the heat these chops need. Clarify your own or use ghee. Two to three minutes a side in a hot pan brings a 3/4-inch double chop to medium-rare; Ranhofer says only "till done", so the degree is left to the cook. Rest the chops five minutes before dressing.
The bean pureeNo. 706 is a puree of white beans; expect dried haricots cooked soft, passed through a sieve, and enriched with butter. Cannellini or navy beans stand in. For piping it must be stiff enough to hold a shape and still warm; if it slumps, dry it out over low heat before it goes in the bag. Canned cannellini, drained well and pureed with butter, is a fair shortcut.
PipingThe recipe points to Fig. 179 for the pastry bag. A star tube gives the right effect: pipe a border of rosettes or a rope down both sides of the row of meat, and sauce only the meat so the puree stays clean.
Yield and serviceFigure one double chop per person, so roughly six to eight servings from a small saddle. The dish is dressed and sauced in the kitchen with extra sauce passed in a boat, consistent with plated restaurant service rather than a joint carved at table.

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 organised less as a cookbook than as a cross-referenced system: this entry cannot be cooked without turning to No. 706 for the bean puree and No. 413 for the half-glaze, which is exactly how a professional kitchen of the period was built. Lamb with white beans is older and humbler than Delmonico's, a pairing found across France and traditionally associated with the mutton-and-haricot cookery of Brittany and the southwest; what Ranhofer does with it, arguably, is raise it to restaurant service by slicing the saddle rather than roasting it whole, piping the beans through a pastry bag, and glossing the meat with a reduced brown sauce. The saddle itself was a prestige cut in the nineteenth century, and it is tempting to read the slicing of it in the kitchen as a mark of the newer service a la russe that American dining rooms adopted in the decades after the Civil War, though that is an inference rather than a documented one.