No. 1757

Stewed Lamb, Peruvian Style

Ragout d'Agneau a la Peruvienne

Cut up into inch and a half squares one leg of raw yearling lamb; season the pieces with salt, pepper, allspice, two ounces of minced onions and squeeze the juice of a lemon over; let macerate in this for two hours, then drain them off and fry in butter; moisten with stock (No. 194a) and espagnole sauce (No. 414)--half of each--to three-quarters of the height of the meats, then cook in a slow oven. After the meat is done, skim the fat from the stock and add to the stew one quart of cooked Lima beans (No. 2699); let the whole simmer on the range for fifteen minutes, then dress with the sauce and garnish around with sweet peppers fried in oil.

← No. 1756 Stewed Lamb, Parisian Style Lamb No. 1758 Stewed Lamb, Irish Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stockpots and sauce bases already on hand; the whole recipe hinges on replacing his two cross-references with something equally dark and glossy. Everything else is a straightforward braise.

Espagnole and stockNo. 414 is espagnole, a roux-thickened brown sauce built on veal stock and mirepoix; No. 194a is one of Ranhofer's basic stocks. If you are not making espagnole, use a good brown stock reduced with a little tomato paste and thickened with a brown roux, half and half with unthickened stock as directed. Commercial demi-glace diluted by half works too, but check the salt before seasoning the meat.
Yearling lambA yearling is older and stronger-flavoured than the spring lamb sold today, and a whole leg is 5-7 lb bone-in. Boneless leg or shoulder, about 3 lb trimmed and cut into 1.5-inch cubes, gives the same result; shoulder is the better braising cut.
"Slow oven"300F. Covered, the cubes need roughly 1.5 to 2 hours to become tender; test with a fork rather than a clock, since older meat and larger cubes both add time.
The two-hour macerationLemon juice, onion, salt and allspice for two hours at cool room temperature is a seasoning step, not a tenderiser. Refrigerate it. Drain and pat the pieces genuinely dry or they will steam rather than brown in the butter.
AllspiceNo quantity is given. A quarter teaspoon of ground allspice for 3 lb of meat reads as a background note; a full teaspoon takes over the dish. Ranhofer expected the cook to judge it.
Lima beansOne quart cooked is roughly 1.5 lb, or about 10 to 12 oz of dried limas soaked and simmered, or three 15-oz cans drained. Add them already tender: the fifteen minutes on the range is to marry them with the sauce, not to cook them.
Sweet peppers fried in oilWhole small peppers or wide strips, blistered in hot oil until the skin loosens, then peeled and salted. They go around the platter at the last moment so they stay distinct from the stew.
YieldAbout 6 to 8 servings, and it reheats better than it keeps warm.

A Little History

This is No. 1757 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled from three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The "Peruvian style" label rests almost entirely on two things a nineteenth-century French kitchen read as South American: Lima beans, named for the Peruvian capital and long associated with it in English and French usage, and fried sweet peppers. The underlying method is pure classical French, a ragout of macerated then browned meat finished in espagnole, and the numbers immediately either side are also stewed lamb, dressed as Parisian and Irish. Hanging a nationality on a garnish was common in menu French of the period, and it tells you more about how Delmonico's advertised variety to its regulars than about anything cooked in Lima.