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Saute of Lamb, Chasseur
Procure two pounds lamb from a tender leg and cut into half-inch square pieces. Heat two tablespoons butter in a frying pan, add the lamb, season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper; gently toss and let slowly cook for twenty minutes, occasionally tossing meanwhile. Add ten finely chopped shallots, lightly toss, add half gill white wine and let reduce for five minutes. Then add one and a half gills tomato sauce one gill demi-glace and twelve heads finely minced canned mushrooms; lightly mix and gently cook on the range for fifteen minutes. Finely chop together two branches of parsley with half clove sound garlic and add to the lamb; mix a little, pour into a deep dish and serve.
A straightforward brown saute that depends almost entirely on the quality of the demi-glace. A few of the measures and quantities need translating for a modern pan.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. So half a gill of white wine is 1/4 cup, one and a half gills of tomato sauce is 3/4 cup, and one gill of demi-glace is 1/2 cup.
- Demi-glace is the recipeThere is no substitute that behaves the same way. Use a good reduced veal or beef stock thickened lightly, or a commercial demi-glace concentrate diluted to about half a cup. Plain canned broth will stay thin and taste flat against the tomato.
- "Twelve heads" of mushroomsTwelve canned mushroom caps, probably something on the order of one small can, drained. Fresh mushrooms work but should be sauteed separately first and added at the tomato stage, or they will release water into the sauce.
- Ten shallotsTen finely chopped shallots is a large quantity by modern measure for two pounds of meat; three or four of today's shallots will give roughly the volume the sauce wants.
- White pepper quantityHalf a teaspoon of white pepper on two pounds of meat is assertive by current taste. Start with a quarter teaspoon and correct at the end, after the sauce has reduced and concentrated.
- Heat controlThe first twenty minutes are meant to be a gentle cook in butter, not a sear. Keep the pan at medium-low so the butter does not brown and the lamb stays tender; the meat is cut small and will overcook quickly on high heat.
- Total cooking timeTwenty minutes in butter, five to reduce the wine, fifteen in the sauce, so roughly forty minutes of cooking for half-inch cubes of leg. Lamb leg holds up, but if the pieces begin to tighten, shorten the final simmer rather than adding liquid.
- Parsley and garlic at the endThe chopped parsley and half clove of garlic are a finishing persillade, not a base seasoning. Added off the heat or in the last moment, they keep their sharpness; cooked in earlier, they disappear.
- YieldTwo pounds of boneless lamb serves four generously with rice, noodles or potatoes to take up the sauce.
Chasseur means "hunter" in French, and the name attaches to a family of brown sauces built on shallots, white wine, mushrooms and tomato finished with demi-glace and chopped parsley -- the combination that appears here almost item for item. The association with hunting is usually explained as a dish put together from what the woods offered, mushrooms above all, though by the time this book was written it had long since become a fixed formula of the professional kitchen rather than anything improvised. What dates the recipe is the assumption that demi-glace is simply on hand, which it would have been in a hotel or restaurant kitchen keeping a stockpot going continuously, and the casual use of canned mushrooms, counted out by the head, at a moment when canning had made them a year-round staple for cooks who once had to wait for the season.