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Lamb Patties
Mince some cold lamb very finely (removing all skin and gristle) also a small onion; add pepper and salt to taste, and a few bread-crumbs. Make as many rounds of pastry as will be required, put some of the mince in half the number, moisten with good gravy, and put the other rounds on top, pinching the edges together. Plunge into boiling fat, fry for ten minutes, and then drain. Dish up on a warm serviette, and garnish with parsley.
A useful way through a Sunday joint: cold roast lamb minced, sealed in pastry and deep-fried. The original is sound, but the frying time and the pastry both need attention.
- Ten minutes is too longThe filling is already cooked, so the only job is to colour and cook the pastry. At 350-360F a patty of about three inches takes three to four minutes, turning once. Ten minutes at that heat gives a scorched crust and a dried-out centre.
- Fat temperature"Boiling fat" in a Victorian kitchen generally meant fat hot enough to fry, shimmering and faintly hazing; in modern terms that is usually reckoned somewhere around 350-375F, though the recipe gives no figure. Use a thermometer and a neutral oil with a high smoke point; lard or beef dripping is closer to the original flavour.
- Which pastryThe recipe does not say which pastry; a short crust or rough puff, rolled thin and cut in rounds, would suit. Ready-rolled shortcrust works; puff pastry will unfurl and leak in the fryer unless the edges are sealed hard.
- SealingDamp the edge with water or egg wash before pinching, then press with a fork. Gravy escaping into hot fat causes violent spitting, which is the real reason to moisten sparingly rather than generously.
- The gravy"Good gravy" here is likely to mean a reduced meat gravy or jellied roasting juices rather than a thin sauce. It should be stiff enough to hold when cold; a loose gravy soaks the pastry base before it reaches the pan.
- Mincing the lambChop by hand or pulse briefly in a processor. A machine run continuously turns cooked lamb to paste, and the filling loses all texture.
- SeasoningCold roast meat tastes flat, so season more assertively than seems right. A little mace, chopped mint or a spoonful of Worcestershire sauce lifts it without straying from period practice.
- Serviette and yieldDishing on a folded napkin was common practice for fried food, the cloth absorbing the last of the fat; a rack over kitchen paper does the same. The recipe gives no quantities, but roughly 1 lb of cooked lamb should make eight to ten patties, enough for four as a light main course.
Patties in nineteenth-century English cookery were small covered pastries, closer to a Cornish pasty in miniature than to the American hamburger patty; the word is generally taken to derive from the French pâté, with anglicised forms such as "petty pate" appearing by the later seventeenth century. Cassell's, like Mrs Beeton before it, devoted a great deal of space to what to do with cold joints: a household that roasted a leg of lamb on Sunday faced it again on Monday and Tuesday, and plainly reheated meat was thought unpalatable. Encasing the mince in pastry and frying it disguised the reheating entirely, and the finished patties could be handed round at a supper or packed for travelling. The serviette garnished with parsley marks this as a dish meant for the table rather than the kitchen, however humble its raw material.