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IRISH STEW (another way)
Put some neat chops, cut from the neck of mutton, into a stewpan; they should be trimmed, and the bones shortened a little. Braise them for half an hour, and season with pepper, salt, and a few chopped mushrooms. Butter a mould, and thickly line it with mashed potatoes lay in the chops, and bake. When done, turn out on a hot dish, and pour in some good gravy through an opening on the top. Time, about half an hour to bake. Two dozen potatoes will be quite sufficient for this dish.
This is Irish stew reworked as a moulded potato pie — closer to a shepherd's pie turned out of its dish than to the loose broth-and-onion stew of the name. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how to braise and how to hold a mashed-potato crust together.
- The hinge: a mash stiff enough to standThe mould is lined with mashed potato and the whole thing is turned out, so the mash must be dry and firm — potatoes steamed or baked rather than boiled wet, mashed with butter and egg yolk and very little milk. A loose, creamy mash will slump the moment the mould is lifted.
- "Two dozen potatoes"Genuinely ambiguous: the book gives no weight and no size, and the figure could mean anything from about 4 lb to 8 lb depending on the potatoes meant. Judge by the mould instead — you need enough mash for a lining about half an inch thick all round, plus a lid.
- Neck of muttonMutton neck chops are still sold by good butchers and are the right cut, being fatty and full of connective tissue. Lamb neck chops substitute directly and cook faster. Trim hard and skim, or the finished mould sits in a pool of fat.
- "Braise them for half an hour"Here braise means a covered stew in a little seasoned liquid on the stove, not a dry oven roast. Half an hour barely softens neck chops; an hour to ninety minutes at a bare simmer gets them properly tender, and the meat then only needs heating through in the mould.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, 350-375F, for the stated half hour will set the potato crust and colour it; brush the outside with butter first so it browns.
- The mouldA charlotte mould or a deep pudding basin, well buttered and, better, dusted with fine breadcrumbs so the crust releases. Let it stand five minutes off the heat before inverting onto the hot dish.
- The opening on topLeave a small hole in the potato lid and pour the reserved braising liquid, reduced and strained, in through it after turning out. Baking the gravy inside would soften the crust from within.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities beyond the potatoes. Six to eight neck chops will serve four, and the mould needs to be large enough to take them inside a half-inch potato lining — a two-quart basin rather than a small one.
Irish stew proper is mutton, potatoes and onions stewed together in one pot, and it is the potato that does the thickening as it breaks down. What Cassell's gives here is that dish put into Victorian dining-room dress: the same ingredients, but disciplined into a moulded entrée that can be turned out whole and sauced at table, in the manner of a French timbale. The habit of lining a buttered mould with a farinaceous crust — potato, rice, macaroni, forcemeat — and filling it with a stew appears throughout nineteenth-century English cookery books as a way of raising a plain dish in status. That the recipe still calls it Irish stew, and still specifies neck of mutton, shows how firmly the cut was attached to the name; neck was cheap, bony and gelatinous, though other cuts, and lamb, were used and recorded as well.