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Braised Loin of Mutton
3 lbs. loin mutton 3 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1 celery stalk 1/2 teaspoonful whole white peppers 1 bunch sweet herbs Salt, pepper, and red pepper to taste 1 turnip 1 carrot 3 cloves 2 sprigs parsley 4 tablespoonfuls flour 12 button mushrooms 1 onion Remove bone from mutton, rub with a little salt, pepper and red pepper mixed together; roll up and tie in neat roll with tape; cut up celery, onion, carrot and turnip, and lay them at bottom of saucepan with herbs and parsley; lay mutton on top of these, and pour enough boiling water to three parts cover it, and simmer slowly two hours; lift mutton into roasting tin with a few tablespoonfuls of the gravy; set in hot oven until brown; strain gravy and skim off fat, melt Crisco in saucepan, add flour, then add gravy gradually, seasoning of salt and pepper, mushrooms, and boil eight minutes. Set mutton on hot platter with mushrooms round, and gravy strained over.
A two-stage braise: a long gentle simmer in aromatics, then a blast of dry oven heat for colour, with the strained cooking liquid turned into a roux gravy. The hinge is that the meat must be boned and tied before it goes near the pot, or it will not hold its shape through two hours of simmering.
- CriscoThe book was published to sell Crisco, so shortening appears where an older cook would have used butter, drippings or lard. Any of those works in the roux; butter gives the best flavour in a gravy this plain.
- MuttonTrue mutton is sheep over a year old, strongly flavoured and firm, and is rarely sold in the US outside halal and Caribbean butchers. A 3 lb boned lamb shoulder is the closest easy substitute; if you use lamb loin instead, it will be tender well before two hours.
- TapeCotton tape was commonly used to tie rolled joints in this period. Butcher's twine at 1-inch intervals does the same job. Remove it before slicing, not before roasting.
- Bunch of sweet herbsA bouquet garni: thyme, marjoram or a bay leaf tied together with the parsley stems so it can be lifted out. Loose dried herbs will cloud the gravy and end up strained away anyway.
- Red pepperIn this period "red pepper" means cayenne. A pinch is enough in the rub, and a second pinch at the gravy stage if you want it.
- Hot ovenRead that as 400-450F. The meat is already cooked through, so this is purely browning: 15 to 20 minutes, basting once with the reserved gravy.
- Whole white peppersThe method never says what becomes of the half-teaspoonful of whole white peppercorns. The likeliest reading is that they go into the braising liquid with the vegetables rather than into the rub, in which case they are strained out with everything else.
- Simmer timeTwo hours suits mutton or lamb shoulder. Test with a skewer rather than the clock; the meat should give without falling apart, since it still has to be lifted whole into a roasting tin.
- Mushrooms and the gravyEight minutes of boiling cooks out the flour and softens the mushrooms. Note that the recipe strains the gravy over the meat and arranges the mushrooms around it, so cook them in the sauce, then fish them out.
- YieldThree pounds of loin, bone in, serves four, perhaps five, with potatoes and a green vegetable.
This comes from A Calendar of Dinners, one of the Crisco recipe books Procter & Gamble published in the years after the shortening was introduced in 1911, written by Marion Harris Neil, then a cookery editor with a considerable following. The books gave a full year of menus with every recipe quietly specifying Crisco, which is why shortening turns up in a French-style braise where butter or the meat's own fat would be traditional. The dish itself is a domestic version of the restaurant braise: aromatics as a bed, liquid enough to three-parts cover the joint, long low cooking, then a finish in the oven to give the pale braised surface a roast's colour. Mutton was still a common joint in English and American kitchens of the period, cheap and assertive enough to stand up to two hours in the pot; its near-disappearance from Western butchers over the following decades is the main reason a recipe like this now reads as unfamiliar.