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Ragout of Lamb, Faubonne
Soak a half pint white beans in cold water at least seven hours and keep in water till required. Cut a three-pound neck of lamb in inch-square pieces, season with one and a half teaspoons salt and a half teaspoon pepper. Heat two tablespoons lard in a large saucepan, add the lamb and gently fry fifteen minutes, or until a light brown, dredge in two tablespoons flour, moisten with a quart water, a pint pure tomato juice and mix well. Drain beans and add to the lamb with a carrot cut in quarters and two medium onions. Tie in a bunch two leeks, two branches celery, two branches parsley, one branch chervil, one bean garlic, one bay leaf, two cloves, one sprig thyme, a sprig marjoram and a sprig mace, add to the rest and lightly mix. Season with a half teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper, and mix again. Cover pan and set in oven two hours, remove, take up carrots, onions and bouquet of herbs, pour ragout into a deep dish, sprinkle a little chopped parsley over and serve.
A straightforward braise, but the original assumes a cook who already knows what oven to use and how long beans take. Two details need pinning down before you start.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Set 325-350F, covered, which will hold the pot at a bare simmer for the full two hours. Anything hotter and the beans burst before the neck meat gives up.
- The beans set the timingA half pint of dried white beans is about one cup, roughly 7 oz. Old stock can still be chalky at two hours; check at ninety minutes and give the pot another half hour if needed rather than serving them underdone.
- "One bean garlic"Almost certainly a literal rendering of the French une gousse d'ail — one clove of garlic. Tuck it into the herb bundle whole so it comes out with the rest.
- "A sprig mace"Mace is the lacy aril around a nutmeg and comes as a dried blade, not a sprig. Use one blade, or a pinch of ground mace stirred into the liquid, since ground spice will not stay in the bouquet.
- Chervil and leeksIf chervil is unavailable, leave it out rather than substituting parsley, which is already in the bundle. Split and wash the leeks well before tying — grit released into a two-hour braise cannot be retrieved.
- Neck of lambBone-in neck, cut across into inch pieces, is what gives this its body. Bone-in shoulder cut into chunks behaves much the same way; boneless leg does not, and will be dry at two hours.
- Pure tomato juiceAt the time this meant strained fresh or bottled tomato pulp, closer to modern passata than to seasoned drinking juice. A pint of passata, or canned tomatoes pushed through a sieve, is the right substitution.
- Fat and seasoningTwo tablespoons lard browns the meat well; oil or beef dripping does the same. Total salt is two teaspoons across the two additions, sensible for three pounds of meat plus a quart of liquid, but skim the fat off the surface before pouring into the serving dish.
- YieldFour to six servings. It reheats better than it eats the first day, and needs only bread.
The name points to the garnish, not the meat: purée Faubonne is a classic French white-bean purée finished with a fine julienne of vegetables, and "à la Faubonne" on a menu is often taken as shorthand for haricot beans in the dish. Alexander Filippini, who had cooked at Delmonico's in New York before compiling The International Cook Book, worked in exactly this idiom — restaurant French translated for American households, sometimes a little too literally, as the "bean garlic" here shows. The cut is telling too: neck of lamb was cheap, gelatinous and unfashionable, and dressing it with a French garnish name is the oldest trick in the professional kitchen. The bouquet garni, lifted out and discarded before serving, is the other mark of a trained cook writing for the home: flavor put in deliberately and then removed, rather than left to be picked around at the table.