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Lamb Steaks, Lyonnaise
Cut three three-quarter-pound steaks from a tender leg of lamb, make a few incisions in skin, neatly flatten, season with a teaspoon salt and a half teaspoon pepper.
Heat two tablespoons melted butter in a sautoire, arrange steaks in it one beside another and cook for eight minutes on each side. Lift up with a fork, place on a hot dish. Finely slice two onions and add to the pan, fry for six minutes, stirring once in a while, pour the sauce over the steaks and serve.
A plain leg-of-lamb steak with a fried onion garnish, from a period when "Lyonnaise" on a menu meant simply onions in butter. Two things need adjusting: the cooking time and the onions.
- SautoireA straight-sided shallow saute pan. Any wide heavy skillet works, so long as the three steaks sit side by side without touching — crowded, they steam rather than brown.
- The cutSteaks cut across a leg of lamb, roughly an inch thick at three-quarters of a pound each. Sirloin chops or thick shoulder chops substitute directly.
- Sixteen minutes is too longEight minutes a side on an inch-thick lamb steak gives grey meat throughout. Modern practice is 3 to 4 minutes a side over fairly high heat for a rosy centre, or 125-130F internal for medium-rare, resting 5 minutes before serving.
- Incisions in the skinThis means nicking through the band of fat and silverskin around the edge at intervals so the steak does not curl as it contracts. Still worth doing.
- Two tablespoons melted butterMeasured melted, so about 1 oz. Butter alone will brown and darken at searing heat; a spoonful of oil alongside it keeps the fond from burning before the onions go in.
- The onionsSix minutes in the lamb fat gives soft, lightly coloured onions, not caramelised ones — that is what Lyonnaise meant here. If you want them sweeter, allow 15 minutes on lower heat, and add a splash of water or stock at the end to lift the browned residue into a sauce.
- SeasoningA teaspoon of salt and a half teaspoon of pepper for a little over two pounds of meat is generous but not out of line; season the surfaces just before the pan, not an hour ahead, unless you intend to dry-brine overnight.
- YieldThree steaks, three servings, or two generous ones.
"Lyonnaise" is one of the shorthand garnish names that French kitchens attached to dishes and that English-language cookbooks then adopted: it signals onions cooked in butter, conventionally explained by Lyon's reputation for onion cookery, and it appears across the repertoire on potatoes, tripe, sauteed liver and steaks of every kind. The recipe also reflects a period when lamb was more often cooked through than served pink.