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Balotine of Lamb Stuffed with Spinach
Remove the stalks and stale leaves from a quart fresh spinach, thoroughly wash and plunge in a quart boiling water with a teaspoon salt for ten minutes, thoroughly drain on a sieve, completely press out all the water with the hands, and finely chop. Place in a small saucepan with two egg yolks, half teaspoon salt, three saltspoons white pepper, half teaspoon sugar and one saltspoon grated nutmeg. Place pan on fire and sharply stir with wooden spoon while heating for five minutes, remove and keep on a table till required. Carefully bone a shoulder of lamb, season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg. Spread spinach on inside part of shoulder, neatly fold up and tie all around. Place a mirepoix in a roasting tin, lay the balotine on top, then pour half a gill water in the pan. Spread a tablespoon melted lard over the balotine and set to roast in oven fifty minutes, turning and frequently basting meanwhile. Remove, unite, dress on a large dish, skim fat from surface of gravy, pour in one gill demi-glace, boil five minutes, strain sauce over the balotine and serve.
A boned, stuffed and rolled shoulder — straightforward butchery and a short roast, but the original assumes a professional kitchen with stock on hand and no thermometer.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so three saltspoons of white pepper is three-quarters of a teaspoon. A gill is half a cup: half a gill of water in the pan is 1/4 cup, and the gill of demi-glace at the end is 1/2 cup.
- MirepoixNo amounts are given. A bed of roughly diced carrot, onion and celery — two cups or so is enough — is what is meant. It flavours the pan juices and keeps the meat off the hot metal.
- Oven heatThe original names none. A boned shoulder bundle wants a hot start and steady finish; 400F throughout works, or 425F for the first fifteen minutes dropped to 375F. Fifty minutes suits a roll of about three pounds.
- Doneness, not the clockRolled shoulder is uneven in thickness and the spinach core insulates the centre. Take it to 145-150F at the thickest point for pink, 160F if your household prefers it grey, and rest it fifteen minutes before slicing or the stuffing will slump out.
- The spinach bindingThe five minutes of sharp stirring over heat sets the egg yolks just enough to hold the chopped spinach together. Keep the pan low and the spoon moving; if the yolks scramble the stuffing turns granular and will not slice cleanly. Squeezing every drop of water out by hand beforehand is what makes this possible.
- TyingButcher's twine at inch-and-a-half intervals, snug but not strangling. "Remove, unite" is a printer's error for untie — cut the strings before dressing the meat on the platter.
- Demi-glaceA reduced brown veal or beef stock thickened with a little roux, kept as a standby in the kitchens Filippini wrote for. A good jarred demi-glace or half a cup of well-reduced brown stock will do; deglaze the roasting tin with it after skimming the fat.
- YieldA quart of raw spinach is only a few ounces and cooks down to very little, so the stuffing layer is thin by design. A boned shoulder of this kind will serve about six.
Ballotine — the book's "balotine" is a common single-l spelling of the period — is generally traced to the French ballot, a bundle or bale, and describes any boned piece of meat or poultry that is stuffed, rolled and tied into a compact parcel, then roasted or braised. It sits alongside the galantine, which is the same construction served cold in its jelly; the two names were used loosely in nineteenth-century kitchens and are still confused. Alexander Filippini, long of Delmonico's in New York, gathered this sort of dish to give American households a French repertoire in translated form, and the recipe shows its restaurant origins plainly: it assumes the cook can bone a shoulder unaided, has a mirepoix and a pot of demi-glace already going, and gives no oven temperature. The spinach-and-egg-yolk stuffing, seasoned with nutmeg and a little sugar, is a standard farce of the classical kitchen, where nutmeg often accompanied green vegetables.