No. 2294

Hashed Lamb a la Celestine-Baked

Hachis d'Agneau a la Celestine au Gratin

Pare a kernel of a raw leg of lamb, make with it a little quenelle forcemeat (No. 92) and when passed through a tammy mix into it a few spoonfals of raw chopped truffles. Suppress the skin and sinews from a pound of cooked lamb's meat, either the saddle or leg; chop it up and add to it a quarter of a pound of chopped mushrooms and two ounces of ham chopped the same. Reduce a few spoonfuls of half-glaze sauce (No. 413), incorporating into it slowly the mushroom broth and two tablespoonfuls of Madeira wine; when well reduced and thick withdraw it from the fire to stir in the prepared hash; heat this without boiling, season, and let it get slightly cold. Use half of the prepared forcemeat to cover the bottom and sides of a pie dish (Fig. 183); fill in the hollow center with hash, cover it over at once with the remainder of the forcemeat, smooth the surface and bestrew with bread-crumbs; pour some melted butter over and bake lightly in a slow oven.

← No. 2293 Hashed Chicken, Baked Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2295 Hashed Lamb, Creole Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with stockpots already going, so the work here is mostly in the two cross-references: a quenelle forcemeat and a half-glaze. Once those exist, the dish assembles quickly.

The hinge: everything must be cold before it is linedThe hinge: the hash goes in cool -- The hash is deliberately cooked, then let get slightly cold, because warm filling will slacken the raw forcemeat and it will slump off the sides of the dish. Ranhofer asks only for "slightly cold"; keeping the forcemeat cold as well makes the lining easier to handle.
"A kernel of a raw leg"The noix, the rounded top muscle of the leg, trimmed clean of skin, fat and sinew. Ranhofer gives no quantity; roughly 8 oz of lean raw lamb should yield enough forcemeat to line and cover a dish of about a quart.
Quenelle forcemeat (No. 92) and the tammyRanhofer's quenelle forcemeat is raw lean meat pounded with a panada and butter and bound with egg; see No. 92 for his proportions. A food processor does the pounding; the tammy, a fine worsted straining cloth, is replaced by pushing the paste through a drum sieve or fine chinois with a plastic scraper. Keep everything cold or the mixture breaks.
Half-glaze (No. 413)Demi-glace: brown sauce reduced with stock until it coats a spoon. A good reduced veal or lamb stock, thickened only by reduction, serves. You need very little — a few spoonfuls reduced with the mushroom liquor and Madeira to a thick, almost jammy bind, or the hash will be wet and the crust soggy.
Mushroom brothNot a purchased product — the liquid given off when the mushrooms are cooked, or the soaking liquid from dried mushrooms. Reduce it into the sauce rather than adding it as bulk.
"Heat this without boiling"The cooked lamb is already cooked; boiling it in the sauce squeezes out its remaining juices and turns the shreds dry and stringy. Warm the hash just enough to bind, then spread it on a tray to cool fast.
Slow ovenRanhofer gives no temperatures; "slow oven" is conventionally read today as somewhere around 300-325F. The forcemeat contains raw meat and egg and needs gentle, even heat to set without curdling; a hot oven browns the crumbs before the center is done. Bake until the center reaches 160-165F.
TrufflesRaw chopped truffle in the forcemeat is the chief expense of the dish. A teaspoon of good truffle paste stirred into the forcemeat is the honest substitute; truffle oil is not.
YieldA pound of cooked lamb plus forcemeat will roughly fill a 1-quart pie dish; reckon four to six as an entree, with a green salad. Ranhofer states no yield.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in a long run of hashes — chicken, lamb Creole, and others — that show how a great restaurant kitchen turned yesterday's roast into today's entrée without admitting it was leftovers. The device is classic French: cooked meat is chopped, bound in a reduced sauce, then sealed inside a lining of raw farce à quenelles so that the dish bakes into something with its own body and crust rather than a scoop of mince. Au gratin here means only the crumbed and buttered surface. The name à la Célestine attaches to a scatter of unrelated preparations in nineteenth-century French cookery — a garnished consommé, a shredded pancake, various truffled dishes — and its origin is obscure; by Ranhofer's day it functioned largely as a menu label.