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Kew Mince, or Haggis Royal
Cut one pound of lean meat from a cold roast leg of mutton. Mix it with half a pound of finely-shredded suet, four table-spoonfuls of finely-grated bread-crumbs, one boned anchovy, one tea-spoonful of minced parsley, half a tea-spoonful of chopped lemon-rind, one small tea-spoonful of salt, and half a tea-spoonful of pepper. When the dry ingredients are thoroughly blended, add a wine-glassful of port or claret, and the yolks of four well-beaten eggs. Put the mixture neatly into a veal caul (or when this cannot be procured, put it into a pie-dish), and bake in a quick oven. Serve as hot as possible, with half a pint of good brown gravy in the dish. Time, three-quarters of an hour to bake. Probable cost, exclusive of the wine, 1s. 8d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A Victorian way of using up the end of a roast leg of mutton: a rich baked mince, bound with egg and wrapped in caul fat rather than a sheep's stomach. Nothing here is difficult, but two of the ingredients now need ordering ahead.
- Cold roast meat is the pointThe recipe assumes leftovers, and it works best that way — already-cooked meat holds its texture through the second baking. A pound of cold roast leg of lamb is the closest modern equivalent to mutton; trim hard edges and chop by hand to about the size of peas. A food processor will reduce it to paste and the mince loses all its character.
- Veal caulCaul is the lacy web of fat from around the stomach; a butcher can usually get it, often frozen, sometimes only as pork caul, which behaves the same. Soak it briefly in warm water to make it pliable before wrapping. If you use the pie-dish alternative given, cover the top with a few thin sheets of suet or a buttered paper so the surface does not dry out.
- SuetHalf a pound of shredded beef suet to a pound of meat is a very high proportion by current taste. Packaged shredded suet works; fresh suet from the butcher should be chilled hard and grated. If you want a lighter result, cutting the suet to 4-6 oz will still bind the mixture.
- Wine-glassfulA Victorian wine glass is roughly 2 fl oz, so about a quarter cup of port or claret. Port gives the sweeter, more obviously "royal" version.
- Quick ovenGenerally reckoned at around 400-425F. In a caul, three-quarters of an hour at that heat browns the outside and sets the egg; in a pie-dish, check at 35-40 minutes, when the centre should be firm and hot through rather than wet.
- The anchovyOne boned salt anchovy or two oil-packed fillets, mashed to nothing. It is doing the work of a savoury seasoning rather than adding fish flavour, and may well be why the salt quantity is modest. Do not substitute anchovy paste by the spoonful without tasting.
- ServingThe half pint of brown gravy — about 10 fl oz, a generous cupful — goes into the dish under or around the mince, not over it, so the browned surface stays browned. Serves four to five as a main course with potatoes and a sharp green vegetable.
Names like "Haggis Royal" attach, in nineteenth-century British cookery books, to a family of baked or boiled minces that borrow the seasoning idea of Scottish haggis — oatmeal or crumbs, suet, plenty of pepper — while dispensing with the paunch and the offal. Meg Dods gives a "Haggis Royal" of this kind, with mutton, suet, wine and seasoning, and the "Royal" appears to have worked as a genteel signal that the dish was respectable enough for a dinner table. The caul wrapping is the older technique here: the same lacy fat that encloses French crépinettes and faggots, used because it bastes the mixture as it renders and then crisps into a skin. What the entry really documents is Victorian leftover management. A cold roast leg of mutton was a large, expensive object that had to appear at several meals, and the costing — one shilling eightpence, wine excluded, for four or five people — suggests a second-day dish could still be worth serving to company.