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Grilled Breast of Lamb
Procure a breast of lamb, break bones with a cleaver, then cut the skin crisscross. Season with teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, rub it over with tablespoon oil, arrange on a double broiler and broil over a slow fire twelve minutes on each side. Remove, then with a small feather brush butter it lightly all over, lightly turn it in bread crumbs and broil again two minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, pour a little maitre d'hotel butter over and serve.
A thrifty cut treated as a grill rather than a braise, which is the one thing worth thinking about before you start. Everything else translates easily.
- The cut itselfBreast of lamb is the fatty belly section, layered with connective tissue between thin rib bones. Twenty-eight minutes over coals renders the fat but does not soften the collagen, so expect chewy meat; many modern recipes braise or slow-roast the breast for 1.5-2 hours first, chill it, then crumb and grill it to finish. That two-stage method suits the cut.
- "Double broiler"Not a double boiler. It is a hinged wire grill basket that clamps the meat between two grids so it can be flipped whole without tearing. A fish basket or two cooling racks bound with wire does the same job.
- "A slow fire"Coals burned down to a light grey ash with no flame, or the cooler side of a covered grill. Breast of lamb drips heavily and flames will scorch the crumbs; if you use a broiler element instead, set the pan 6-7 inches away.
- Breaking the bonesCracking the rib bones with a cleaver helps the breast lie flat rather than curl as the fat contracts, and makes it easier to portion afterwards. Score the skin side shallowly, in a diamond pattern, only through the fat and not into the meat.
- Feather brushA trimmed quill or bunch of feathers was a common kitchen brush of the period. A pastry brush is the equivalent, and the point of the instruction is lightness: too much butter and the crumbs slide off in a paste.
- Maître d'hôtel butterSoftened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, usually rolled in paper and chilled. A coin of it set on the hot meat gives the sauce the recipe asks for.
- YieldOne breast runs 1.5-2 lb with a high proportion of bone and fat, serving two as a main course. Cut between the ribs to portion.
Breast of lamb belongs to the cheap-cut tradition that filled the back pages of grand cookbooks, and the technique here is straightforwardly French, with the crumbing and the maître d'hôtel butter both standard hotel-kitchen practice of the period. Coating a grilled or braised piece of meat in butter and crumbs to build a crust is what nineteenth-century French kitchens called à la Sainte-Ménehould, generally traced to the treatment of pig's trotters, and it was applied freely to any fatty, bony cut that needed a crisp surface. That such a modest cut is given a named compound butter says a good deal about the era's cooking: refinement was a matter of finish and method, not of buying the expensive part of the animal.