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Mutton Steaks, Sauce Poivrade
Procure three three-quarter-pound steaks from a tender leg of mutton. Make a few incisions around the skin of each, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, neatly rub with a tablespoon oil, arrange on the broiler and broil for seven minutes on each side. Remove, dress on a dish, pour a poivrade sauce over the steaks and serve.
A three-line broiling instruction that assumes two things a modern cook does not have: mutton, and a sauce poivrade already sitting on the stove. Both are worth solving before the meat goes near the heat.
- Make the sauce firstThe recipe assumes poivrade is on hand, as it would have been in a professional kitchen. It is a peppery brown sauce: a mirepoix sweated in fat, deglazed with vinegar and white wine, reduced with espagnole or demi-glace, crushed peppercorns added only near the end, then strained. Add the pepper late; boiled a long time it turns harsh and bitter rather than aromatic.
- Mutton, and what to use insteadMutton is sheep over two years old, strong-flavoured and firmer than lamb. Butchers who carry it are rare in the US; hogget (one to two years) is the closest thing, and ordinary leg-of-lamb steaks are the practical substitute. Lamb is milder and more tender, which changes the timing below.
- The cut and its sizeThree-quarters of a pound each is 12 oz, cut crosswise through the leg so each steak has a round of bone at the centre, roughly 1 to 1 1/4 inches thick. Ask for "leg steaks" or "center-cut leg chops"; the same weight sliced thinner will overcook before it colours.
- Why the incisions matterCutting through the skin and the silverskin at the edge severs the connective tissue that contracts in the heat. Without it the steak buckles into a dome and cooks unevenly. The recipe asks only for "a few incisions"; cuts spaced an inch or so apart around the edge work well, going through the membrane rather than deep into the muscle.
- "Broil" here means direct heatIn period kitchen usage the broiler was typically a hinged wire grid set over live coals or a gas flame, cooking the meat by direct radiant heat rather than in an enclosed oven. A modern overhead broiler at its highest setting, or a charcoal or gas grill, does the same job. Have the surface genuinely hot before the meat touches it or the oil will simply steam.
- Seven minutes a side is too longSeven minutes a side is a long time -- That timing suits tough old mutton taken well past pink; the recipe itself says nothing about doneness. For lamb leg steaks of this thickness, expect about 4 to 5 minutes a side, pulling at around 130-135F at the centre for medium-rare, a little higher for medium. Rest 5 minutes before saucing.
- Seasoning and oilThe wording is ambiguous, but the teaspoon of salt and half teaspoon of pepper most likely cover all three steaks rather than each. One tablespoon of oil for three 12-oz steaks is a thin film, which is the point: enough to conduct heat and prevent sticking, not enough to flare.
- YieldThree steaks of 12 oz serve three generously or six if carved off the bone and fanned onto warmed plates. Warm the platter; poivrade thickened with demi-glace sets quickly on cold china.
Sauce poivrade takes its name simply from poivre, pepper, and belongs to the family of vinegar-sharpened brown sauces that classical French kitchens kept for strong meats and game; its close relative, sauce chevreuil, adds game trimmings and is served with venison. Pairing it with mutton follows the same logic: an assertive, slightly sour sauce to meet an assertive meat. That mutton appears at all is a marker of the period. In American and British dining of the early twentieth century mature sheep was commonly eaten alongside lamb, and leg of mutton was a respectable centrepiece rather than a curiosity; the shift towards almost exclusively young lamb came later. The terse, assume-nothing-but-technique phrasing here, with the sauce merely named and left to a separate entry, is characteristic of the style.