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Lamb Steaks, Zahn
Procure three three-quarter-pound tender lamb steaks, make a few incisions around skin, and season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Thoroughly heat a tablespoon melted butter in sautoire, arrange the steaks in one beside another and gently cook for six minutes on each side, lift up, dress on a hot dish and keep hot. Remove butter from pan, pour in two gills pure tomato juice and a gill demi-glace, season with a saltspoon cayenne and let reduce to half the quantity. Mix on a plate a half ounce butter with a half teaspoon freshly chopped tarragon leaves, then add little by little to the sauce, continually mixing meanwhile. Add one teaspoon tarragon vinegar, lightly mix, pour sauce over steaks and serve.
A Delmonico-style sauté with a quick pan sauce, written for a cook who already knows what a sautoire is. The measurements convert cleanly once you know the old volumes.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of tomato juice is 1 cup and a gill of demi-glace is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is a scant 1/4 teaspoon, and cayenne at that level is assertive; start with half if you are unsure.
- SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan, not a deep pot. Use a heavy skillet wide enough to hold all three steaks without crowding, since crowding steams the meat instead of browning it.
- The hinge: butter off the heatThe tarragon butter is worked in little by little to thicken and gloss the reduced sauce. Keep the pan off direct heat while doing it and do not let the sauce boil again, or the emulsion breaks and you get a greasy slick over the meat.
- Cut and thicknessThe recipe says only 'tender lamb steaks' and does not name the cut; twelve-ounce steaks are most likely cut across the leg and around an inch thick, though shoulder steaks were also sold this way. Leg is leaner than shoulder and toughens quickly; the incisions around the skin keep the fat band from curling the steak in the pan.
- TimingTwelve minutes in total will take a steak of this size well past pink. For pink lamb, pull it at about 130F internal and rest it while you build the sauce; the dish is dressed and kept hot at that point anyway.
- Demi-glaceThe original assumes a stockpot running all day. A good reduced veal or lamb stock does the job; commercial demi-glace concentrate works but is salty, so hold back some of the teaspoon of salt seasoning the meat.
- Tomato juice"Pure tomato juice" here means strained fresh tomato, not the canned drink, which is seasoned and thinner. Passata reduced by half is the closest match.
- YieldThree steaks, three servings. The finished sauce comes to about 3/4 cup, enough to nap the meat rather than pool around it.
The International Cook Book is Alexander Filippini's, and Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, where the house habit was to name dishes after the patrons, colleagues and public figures who ordered or inspired them. "Zahn" is plausibly one of those personal dedications rather than a place or a technique, though the name has not been identified; the book is thick with such names, and many of the people behind them may no longer be recoverable. What is legible is the method, which is pure late nineteenth-century restaurant grammar: sear the meat, deglaze with tomato and demi-glace, reduce, then finish the sauce with a compound butter worked in off the heat. That last step, monter au beurre, is what separates a professional pan sauce of the period from a home gravy, and tarragon with vinegar to sharpen it is the standard French pairing that also underpins béarnaise.