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Irish Stew
1 pound middle neck mutton, 2 pounds potatoes, 4 onions, 1 tablespoon Crisco, bunch of herbs, pepper and salt, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 teaspoon chopped parsley, and cold water.
Put Crisco into saucepan with mutton which should be cut into small pieces. Peel and quarter onions, and put them in saucepan, add herbs and barely cover with cold water. Peel potatoes, choose small ones and do not cut them up, and lay over meat, sprinkle little salt and pepper on potatoes and bring to boil. Then add flour and stand saucepan where it will stew gently 2 hours. Take out herbs, season to taste with salt and pepper. Dish up meat in circle on flat dish, put potatoes and onions in center, leaving 1 potato in saucepan, to mash and thicken the gravy a little, pour gravy over stew, and sprinkle with parsley. Inferior cuts of mutton can be used advantageously for this dish, such as scrag-end or breast of mutton; the bones and gristle with long stewing give a nice flavor to the dish.
A plain braise that depends on one thing: gentle heat for the full two hours. The list of cuts at the end is the useful part — this is a recipe built for bony, gristly meat.
- Mutton and its substitutesMiddle neck is the section of neck below the scrag; today it is sold as lamb neck (the boneless eye from it is sold as neck fillet). Scrag end is the bony upper neck. Mutton (sheep generally over two years) is uncommon outside halal and specialist butchers, so use bone-in lamb shoulder or neck. Expect a milder, sweeter result than the original intended.
- CriscoThis book was published to promote Crisco, then a new hydrogenated vegetable shortening, which explains its appearance in a stew that traditionally needs no added fat at all. A tablespoon of any neutral oil, or nothing, works identically.
- "Stew gently" means a bare simmerThe hinge of the dish. On a modern burner set the lowest possible flame, or move the covered pot to a 300F oven. A rolling boil in two hours will shred the potatoes into the liquid and leave the meat stringy.
- Water level"Barely cover" applies to the meat and onions only — the potatoes sit above the liquid and steam. Do not top the pot up; the finished gravy should be scant and thick, not soupy.
- The flourAdding a spoonful of dry flour to the surface after boiling is a period habit and will lump. Either whisk it into a few tablespoons of cold water first, or skip it and rely on the mashed potato at the end, which is the better thickener here.
- Bunch of herbsAn untied bouquet is hard to fish out of a pot of potatoes. Tie thyme, parsley stalks and a bay leaf with string, or use a small muslin bag.
- YieldOne pound of bone-in meat and two pounds of potatoes will serve about three, or four modestly with bread.
Irish stew in its oldest form is usually described as mutton — some accounts say kid — with onion and potato, water and little else, a one-pot dish suited to a hearth and a cheap joint; the flour, the herb bundle and the shortening here are later refinements on that base. Marion Harris Neil's A Calendar of Dinners was written for Procter & Gamble to give American cooks a year of menus in which Crisco could stand in for butter, suet or drippings, which is why a tablespoon of it opens a recipe that needs no fat — the meat supplies plenty. The closing note on scrag-end and breast is the most honest line on the page: this was a dish for the cuts nobody else wanted, and long slow stewing of bone and gristle is exactly what gives it body.