No. 1751

Shoulder of Lamb with Cucumbers

Epaule d'Agneau aux Concombres

Prepare and braise two shoulders of spring lamb as explained for a la Benton (No. 1748), when done, untie and glaze; dress them either on a garnishing of cucumbers with Danish sauce (No. 457), or else on a macedoine garnishing (No. 680), or a jardiniere (No. 677). Strain the stock, remove all its fat, and reduce it to the consistency of a light syrup, serving it in a sauce-boat the same time as the shoulders.

These shoulders may be dressed in the shape of ducks or hornpipes, dishing them upon the same garnishings.

← No. 1750 Shoulder of Lamb a la Garnier Lamb No. 1752 Shoulder of Lamb with Glazed Vegetables—Stuf →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a cross-referenced entry in the style of Ranhofer's Epicurean: the method lives at No. 1748 and the garnishes at three other numbers. What is actually being described is a braised, boned shoulder finished with its own reduced stock.

The hinge: reduce, then glazeThe braising liquid does the work. Strain it, chill or skim off every trace of fat, then reduce it until it coats a spoon like light syrup. Note that the recipe sends this reduction to the table in a sauce-boat; the glazing of the shoulders is given as a separate step. Reduce it too far and the salt concentrates past eating.
Braising temperature and timeThe book gives neither: the method is at No. 1748. A shoulder is collagen-heavy and wants low, slow moist heat, so in a modern oven something in the region of 300-325F, tightly covered, until a skewer meets no resistance. Expect well past the pink stage. These figures are modern guidance rather than anything Ranhofer states.
Spring lambIn this period the term generally meant a very young animal, often milk-fed, and smaller than lamb sold today; the recipe gives no weight. A single modern bone-in shoulder, boned and rolled, can stand in for the pair called for here.
Cucumbers as a hot vegetableThey are peeled, halved, seeded, cut into short lengths or turned into olive shapes, blanched briefly in salted water, then finished in butter or a little of the braising stock. Two or three minutes of blanching is plenty; longer and they collapse to water.
Macedoine and jardiniereA macedoine is mixed vegetables cut in small dice, cooked separately and bound with butter; a jardiniere is broadly the same vegetables cut in short batons. The difference is largely one of cut.
Danish sauceRanhofer's No. 457 must be looked up rather than guessed at; the numbered sauces in this book are not interchangeable with modern sauces of similar name. If you are not building the sauce, the reduced braising stock alone in a sauce-boat is the author's own alternative.
"Ducks or hornpipes"These are presentation shapes rather than different preparations, but the book does not explain what either shape looked like. Any neat tight roll serves the same purpose today.
Untie before glazingThe instruction to untie is easy to skip and hard to correct. Remove the strings while the meat is hot and still holding its shape, then glaze, or the glaze sets over the twine marks.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is essentially his working system set down in print — some 3,500 numbered entries that refer to one another rather than repeating themselves, exactly as this one does. The lamb section reflects a period when spring lamb was a genuinely seasonal luxury and a shoulder was worth boning, braising and glazing rather than simply roasting. Cooked cucumber, which has largely dropped out of American cooking, was a standard French garnish of the era, valued for its mildness against fatty meat; it appears throughout nineteenth-century restaurant repertoires beside the diced macedoine and baton-cut jardiniere offered here as alternatives. The three-way choice of garnish is a reminder that these entries were written for a brigade with all of them already prepared and waiting.