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HARICOT MUTTON (a good family dish)
Take three pounds of the neck of mutton, divide it into cutlets, trim them neatly, and fry them in a little dripping till nicely browned, and with them three carrots, two turnips, and an onion, all sliced. Drain them from the fat, and put them into a saucepan. Pour over them a quart of water, which has been boiled in the pan in which the meat, etc., was fried, and thicken with a table-spoonful of flour, mixed smoothly with a little cold water. Skim carefully, and season with salt and pepper and a little ketchup, according to taste. Simmer for an hour. Serve with the meat in the middle of the dish, the vegetables round it, and the gravy poured over all. A few sippets of toasted bread may be placed at the bottom of the dish, or served as a garnish. A few haricot beans (see HARICOT BEANS, TO BOIL) are a great improvement. Probable cost, 2s. 10d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A plain brown stew of neck cutlets and root vegetables, thickened in the pan. Most of what needs translating is the meat, the ketchup and the cooking time.
- The meatMutton neck from a mature sheep is rare outside halal and specialist butchers; lamb neck cutlets or bone-in shoulder chops behave the same way. Keep the bones in — they carry most of the body of the gravy.
- Simmer longer than an hourNeck is collagen-heavy and an hour of simmering leaves it tight and stringy. Give it 1½ to 2 hours at a bare simmer, covered, until the meat gives at the bone; add the carrots and turnips for the last 40 minutes if you want them intact.
- A quart of waterAn imperial quart is 40 fl oz, about 5 US cups. Boiling it in the frying pan is a deglazing step — it lifts the fond, and skipping it loses most of the colour and savour.
- KetchupIn a Victorian British kitchen this means mushroom or walnut ketchup, thin, dark and salty, not sweet tomato sauce. A teaspoon of mushroom ketchup or Worcestershire sauce gives the intended effect; tomato ketchup will make it sweet.
- DrippingBeef or lamb dripping, i.e. rendered fat. Any high-smoke-point fat will brown the cutlets; note that the recipe has you drain the meat and vegetables from the fat before the water goes in, so the dripping's contribution is mostly in the browning and the fond.
- ThickeningA tablespoon of flour slaked in cold water into 5 cups of liquid gives a very light gravy, closer to broth. Double it if you want something that coats the meat, and let it simmer at least 15 minutes to cook out the raw starch.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of toasted bread, cut from a crustless slice. Put them under the meat and they soften into the gravy; ring them round the edge and they stay crisp.
- YieldFive or six as written, with potatoes alongside. The "probable cost, 2s. 10d." is the book's household-budget note, not a measurement.
The name has nothing to do with beans, despite the closing suggestion that a few haricots would improve it. Haricot as a stew of cut-up meat with root vegetables reached English cookery from French usage and is generally traced to the Old French harigoter, to cut up or shred; the bean acquired the same spelling separately, and here the two meet in a single recipe's closing suggestion. Cassell's places it in the family-cookery register — neck of mutton was among the cheapest joints on the block, the vegetables are the standard winter roots, and the recipe stretches three pounds of bony meat across six people with bread and gravy. The careful costing in shillings and pence is a signature of the book, aimed at a mistress of the house ordering from a butcher and checking the weekly accounts.