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Lamb Steaks, Grand Mere
Procure three tender lamb steaks of three-quarters of a pound each. Make a few light incisions on the skin all around. Season with one and a half teaspoons salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Thoroughly heat two tablespoons melted lard in a frying pan; place them in the pan, one beside another, and cook on the fire for five minutes on each side. Take up the steaks and lay them in a cocotte (earthen) dish. Remove all the fat from the surface of the gravy, pour in one gill of cold water and let boil for three minutes, then pour it over the steaks. Cut from a loaf of sandwich bread three slices an inch thick, cut each slice into one-inch squares and fry in a black frying pan with a tablespoon melted butter until a good golden colour and add to the steaks. Cut two ounces salt pork into quarter-inch squares, place in a small frying pan with a teaspoon melted lard and fry for three minutes; drain well, and add to the steaks. Cut one large, raw, peeled potato into quarter-inch squares, wash and drain well, then fry in boiling fat for five minutes; lift up, drain and add to the steaks. Pour half gill hot demi-glace over, dredge a teaspoon finely chopped chives over all. Cover the pan, and let steam on the fire slowly for three minutes. Serve without uncovering.
A one-pot assembly rather than a braise: everything is cooked separately, combined in a covered dish, and given three minutes of steam so the garnish takes on the meat juices. The croutons are the timing constraint — they turn to sponge if the dish sits.
- Serve at once, coveredThe bread cubes are added crisp and have only the three minutes of steaming before they soften. Bring the covered dish straight to the table and lift the lid there; holding it warm for ten minutes ruins the contrast the recipe is built on.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. The half gill of demi-glace is therefore 1/4 cup.
- CocotteHere a lidded earthenware or cast-iron casserole that goes on direct heat, rather than the small ramekin sold as a cocotte today; both senses were current in the period. A 2-quart Dutch oven or heavy lidded braiser does the job.
- The steaksThree-quarter-pound lamb steaks suggest leg steaks or chump chops cut roughly an inch thick. Five minutes a side in a hot pan will take them well past rare; if your steaks are thinner, cut it to three, since they get three more minutes of steam at the end.
- Demi-glaceClassically espagnole sauce combined with brown stock and reduced by half. Good commercial demi-glace concentrate or a well-reduced homemade brown stock both work; a stock cube dissolved in water will read as salty and thin against the already-seasoned meat.
- Lard and the black frying panLard gives the flavour intended, but clarified butter or a neutral oil is fine. "Black frying pan" simply means a well-seasoned iron or steel pan, which browns bread evenly.
- Salt porkSalt pork varies a good deal in saltiness. Taste a fried cube before adding all of it, and blanch the dice in simmering water for a minute first if it is aggressive. Unsmoked slab bacon or pancetta substitutes.
- Frying the potato"Boiling fat" means deep fat at roughly 350-375F. Dry the washed cubes thoroughly or they will spit and stew rather than colour.
- YieldThree steaks, three servings. The salt total of one and a half teaspoons covers all three and is about right given the salt pork and demi-glace to come.
Grand-mère — grandmother — is one of the standard French menu tags, and it means what it says here: the garnish of bacon lardons, fried potato cubes, croutons and often small onions or mushrooms that turns a plain piece of meat into a farmhouse dish. It overlaps with the garnish known as bonne femme, though the two are distinct in the classical repertoire. Its appearance in an international cook book of this period reflects the near-total dominance of French professional cookery in the hotel and restaurant kitchens of Europe and America before the First World War: even a book meant to range across the world's cuisines organises its meat cookery around French garnish names, French pan technique and a base of demi-glace. The instruction to serve without uncovering is a professional's touch.