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Lamb Steaks, Puree of Chestnuts
Have three steaks of three-quarters of a pound each cut from a tender leg of lamb. Make a few incisions around the skin. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Heat a tablespoon butter in a frying pan, add the steaks, one beside another, and fry for six minutes on each side. Remove, dress a puree of chestnuts on a hot dish, pyramid shape, arrange the steaks around. Free the pan from all fat, then add a tablespoon sherry and one gill of demi-glace; boil for two minutes and pour around the steaks.
A plain hotel-kitchen preparation that depends almost entirely on two things the recipe assumes you already have: a good demi-glace and an unsweetened chestnut puree. Sort those out and the rest is fifteen minutes at the stove.
- The hinge: don't overcook the lambSix minutes a side on steaks this thick will take leg of lamb well past pink. Cook to an internal 130-135F for medium-rare and rest five minutes; the original's timing gives a thoroughly cooked steak.
- A gillHalf a cup, four fluid ounces. So roughly half a cup of demi-glace, reduced with a tablespoon of sherry, for three steaks.
- Demi-glaceClassically brown stock and espagnole sauce reduced by half. Commercial demi-glace concentrate works; failing that, reduce a cup of good brown veal or beef stock to half and finish it with a knob of butter. Thin canned broth will not coat.
- Puree of chestnutsUnsweetened, not the sweetened chestnut spread sold for desserts. Canned or vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts simmered in stock or milk and passed through a sieve, then mounted with butter, gives the stiff mixture needed to hold a pyramid on the dish.
- "Incisions around the skin"Score through the fat and the membrane at the edge of each steak at intervals. This is what stops the steaks buckling in the pan, not a decorative gesture.
- Pan and fatThree steaks of three-quarters of a pound each want a 12-inch pan, or two batches; crowded, they steam. A tablespoon of butter alone will brown and burn at searing heat, so add a little neutral oil or clarify the butter first.
- DeglazingPour off the fat, take the pan off the heat before the sherry goes in, then return it to reduce. Two minutes of boiling is enough to cook off the raw spirit and pull up the fond.
- YieldThree steaks, about 2 1/4 lb of meat before trimming, serving three generously or four modestly with the puree.
The International Cook Book (1906) is the work of Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows the house style: a French garnish, a French sauce, and instructions written for someone who already knows how to make both. Chestnut puree with lamb and with game belongs to the classical French repertoire, where chestnuts were an autumn and winter vegetable rather than a confection, and demi-glace was the standing brown sauce from which most others were built. The recipe's brevity is the point: books like this one functioned as an aide-m/u00e9moire for professional cooks and for the ambitious households that employed them.