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Braised Saddle of Lamb
(Normandy.) Bone a saddle of lamb and fill it with a force-meat of bread-crumbs, onion, herbs, butter, egg, and 1/2 pound of chopped veal. Roll it, tie it, and lard the upper side with thin strips of pork. Put it in a pan with 1 pint of white stock, 2 onions, 1 carrot, some celery, parsley, and thyme. Cover with a tight lid and let it cook in the oven for 1 1/2 hours. Let it cool in the sauce, remove the fat from the latter, and reduce it by re-boiling. Dip the meat in some of the sauce and then in bread-crumbs, and brown it in the oven. Pour the sauce around, after straining it, and arrange a border of stuffed tomatoes or spinach or baked onions or potatoes, whichever is most convenient.
A French braise written in the shorthand of a cook who assumed you already knew the method: braise, cool in the liquor, crumb, and brown. The proportions for the forcemeat are left entirely to judgment, so the notes below fill in what the original omits.
- What a saddle isThe saddle is the whole double loin, both sides of the backbone, from the last rib to the hip. Boned out it gives a rectangle of meat weighing roughly 3 to 4 lb, and a butcher will need notice to prepare one. A boned double loin or two boned single loins laid head to tail will stand in.
- Forcemeat proportionsNone are given beyond the half pound of veal. A workable ratio is 8 oz ground veal, 1 1/2 to 2 cups fresh breadcrumbs, one onion sweated in 2 oz butter, one egg, and a handful of parsley and thyme. Fry a teaspoon of the mixture to taste it for salt before you fill the roast.
- LardingLarding here means threading thin strips of pork fat through the surface of the meat with a larding needle. Lacking one, lay thin sheets of fatback, unsmoked pancetta or fat bacon over the top and tie them on; the purpose is to keep the exposed loin from drying while it braises uncovered of any liquid on top.
- White stockAn unbrowned veal or chicken stock, made from raw bones without roasting them, and unsalted. A good low-sodium chicken stock is the nearest shop-bought equivalent, since the sauce is reduced hard at the end and any salt in it concentrates.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A covered braise of this kind wants a steady 325F for the hour and a half, and the final crumbed browning wants 425F for 15 to 20 minutes, watched, since dry crumbs catch quickly.
- Cook the stuffing throughBecause the roll encloses raw veal forcemeat, the centre needs to reach 165F, not the 130-135F you would want for plain lamb. Check with a thermometer at the thickest point of the stuffing rather than trusting the time.
- Cooling in the sauceThis is the hinge of the recipe and not an optional step. Cooling in the braising liquid lets the roll set so it slices cleanly, and the chilled fat lifts off in a sheet. The whole dish can be braised a day ahead and crumbed and browned before serving.
- Reducing the sauceThe original removes the fat, reduces the sauce by re-boiling, and strains it only at the end, before pouring it round the meat; straining before reducing is a modern convenience rather than what is written. Boil down until it coats a spoon -- a pint of stock plus the vegetable juices will reduce to roughly a cup. Season only at this stage.
- YieldSix to eight servings, cut in thick slices across the roll. The original offers stuffed tomatoes, spinach, baked onions or potatoes as alternatives for the border, 'whichever is most convenient', and suggests nothing else alongside.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea belongs to a genre popular around the turn of the twentieth century: the American cook's tour of European provincial cookery, each dish tagged with the region it was collected from. The Normandy label here is doing less work than it seems, since the method, boned saddle, veal forcemeat, larding, a covered braise on a bed of aromatics, then crumbing and glazing in a hot oven, is standard French professional practice of the period rather than anything peculiar to Normandy. The final crumb-and-brown step is worth noticing as part of that standard practice.