Home › Sauces and Meats › Shoulder of Lamb
Shoulder of Lamb
(Spalla d'agnello) Cut the meat of a shoulder of lamb in small pieces, or squares. Chop two small onions, brown them with a piece of butter and when they are browned put the meat and season with salt and pepper. Wait until the meat begins to brown and then add another piece of butter dipped in flour. Mix the whole and complete the cooking with soup stock or water with bouillon cubes poured in little by little. 80
A plain braise of lamb shoulder, thickened with a lump of floured butter rather than a roux made at the start. The instructions assume a cook who knows what a browned onion looks like and how long lamb needs.
- The hinge: add the liquid in stagesPouring the stock in "little by little" is not fussiness. Each addition reduces and combines with the floured butter, building a glossy sauce instead of a pale broth with meat in it. Keep the level just below the top of the meat and top it up as it falls.
- "A piece of butter"The original gives no amounts. For a 3 lb shoulder, reckon on about 2 tablespoons to brown the onions and another 1 to 2 tablespoons kneaded with an equal volume of flour for the thickening.
- Butter dipped in flourThis is beurre manié in its simplest form: soft butter worked into flour and dropped in whole. It melts into the pan juices and thickens them. Work it smooth first or you will get flour lumps.
- Cut and quantityA bone-in shoulder loses perhaps a third of its weight to bone, so buy 3 to 3 1/2 lb bone-in or about 2 lb boneless for four people. Cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes and leave the fat on; it carries the dish.
- Time, which the recipe omitsShoulder is a working muscle. "Complete the cooking" means a covered simmer of 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours over low heat, until a fork goes in without resistance. Twenty minutes gives you tough meat in thin gravy.
- Bouillon cubesCubes were a modern convenience when this book was written, and they carry their own salt. If you use them, salt the meat lightly at the browning stage and correct at the end.
- Browning properlyDo the meat in batches in a wide pan. Crowding it, which is easy with the onions already in the pan, steams the lamb grey and costs you most of the sauce's flavour.
- ServingServes four. In the Italian manner this would go out with the sauce spooned over, alongside polenta, roast potatoes or a plain risotto to take the gravy.
This comes from Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919), a slim volume aimed at American households curious about Italian cooking, which is why the Italian title sits in parentheses after the English one and why bouillon cubes appear beside the older instruction to use soup stock. The method is the standard domestic braise found across northern and central Italy under names like spezzatino or agnello in umido: brown the aromatics, brown the meat, thicken lightly, then wet it down by degrees. Lamb of this kind was associated with spring in Catholic Italy and with Easter, and the shoulder was the cheaper end of the animal, generally stewed while the leg and loin were roasted. The trailing "80" is a number carried over from the printed original, not part of the method.