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Shoulder of Lamb, Broiled
The shoulder of lamb split and broiled on a gridiron over a bright fire. Remove to a hot platter, and season highly with hot melted butter, pepper and salt. Give attention and have well broiled without burning. It is delicious.
A skeletal nineteenth-century instruction that assumes you own a gridiron and know how to butcher. The technique is sound; it just needs numbers.
- "Split" means butterflied"Split" most likely means opened out flat, though the original does not say whether the bone comes out -- a whole shoulder is thick and irregular. Ask the butcher to bone it and open it out, then even up the thick lobes so the piece is roughly 1 to 1.5 inches throughout. A 4 lb bone-in shoulder yields roughly 3 lb of boned meat, enough for four.
- Gridiron equivalentsA gridiron was a rack of iron bars set over coals. A charcoal or gas grill is the direct descendant; a broiler set 4 inches from the element does the same job indoors, though without the smoke.
- "A bright fire"A brisk, clear fire, coals glowing and radiating steadily rather than flaring. On a grill that means medium-high; the recipe gives no temperature. Flame licking the meat is the likeliest cause of the burning the original warns against.
- Timing and donenessButterflied shoulder is uneven by nature, so cook to temperature rather than the clock: roughly 8-10 minutes per side, pulling at 130-135F in the thickest part for medium-rare. The thin flaps will reach medium and that is the point of the cut.
- Shoulder is not legShoulder carries far more connective tissue and intramuscular fat than leg. It is more forgiving of a few extra minutes but should still not be pushed past medium, where the fat renders out and the meat tightens.
- The butter is the sauce"Season highly with hot melted butter, pepper and salt" is the whole finishing step. Melt 3-4 tablespoons, pour it over the meat on a warmed platter, and salt generously at the table so the crust stays dry until serving.
- Rest before carvingThe recipe skips this. Give the meat 8-10 minutes on the hot platter before slicing, and carve across the grain in thin slices; the grain runs in several directions in a shoulder, so reorient as you go.
Broiling over a gridiron was a common American method for cuts thin enough to cook through before they charred, and shoulder of lamb split flat qualified. Household books of this kind were often written for kitchens in transition: the coal or wood range with its broiling attachment was generally giving way to gas, though the vocabulary of the open fire persisted, which may be why the instruction still names the gridiron and the "bright fire" rather than a temperature. Shoulder was the cheap end of the lamb, and cookbooks of the period return to it repeatedly with braises, stews and stuffed roasts. Broiling it was the quick option, and the terse enthusiasm here, ending simply "It is delicious," is characteristic of a genre that assumed its readers had watched someone do this before.