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MEAT PIE (a la Don Pedro)
This is a kind of ragout put into a tin made expressly for the dish. Take some mutton-chops, either from the loin or neck, trim them neatly and put them, with some chopped parsley, butter, pepper, salt, etc., in a stewpan over a slow fire. Place the chops, with some good brown gravy, into the tin baking-dish, and add slices of raw ham. Cover with the lid, but first fill in with mashed potatoes to the brim; bake for two hours in a slow oven, when the tin cover may be taken off, and the chops will be found tender and succulent. Probable cost of chops, 1s. per pound.
A hotpot in all but name: chops, ham and gravy sealed under a lid of mashed potato and left alone. The instructions are compressed to the point of vagueness in two places, and both are worth sorting out before you start.
- The hinge: the lid must actually sealThe potato is filled "to the brim" and then the tin cover goes on, so the meat steams in its own gravy rather than drying out. Use a deep casserole or Dutch oven with a well-fitting lid, and take the lid off only near the end if you want the potato coloured.
- "A slow oven"300-325F (150-160C). At that temperature two hours is right for mutton chops on the bone; leaner lamb chops will be done closer to 90 minutes.
- "A tin made expressly for the dish"A lidded tinned-steel baking dish, the Victorian equivalent of a covered casserole. Nothing is lost by using enamelled cast iron or a heavy ovenproof dish with foil crimped tightly over the rim.
- The stewpan stageThe chops go over a slow fire with parsley, butter and seasoning, but no time is given. Read it as a few minutes to soften the butter and colour the chops lightly on both sides, not a full braise.
- MuttonSheep over a year old, with a stronger flavour and more connective tissue than lamb. Real mutton is available from some butchers and halal shops; lamb loin or neck chops substitute directly, with the shorter time noted above.
- Raw hamUncooked cured ham, sliced thin, laid over the chops to season the gravy as it renders. Prosciutto crudo or an uncooked country ham slice does the job. Because it is salty, hold back on salt in the stewpan and correct at the end.
- Brown gravyA period brown gravy, generally stock-based and commonly thickened with browned flour rather than being simply the pan drippings. About a cup of well-flavoured beef or lamb stock, lightly thickened, is enough to keep the chops moist without flooding the potato.
- Yield and the price noteFour to six loin or neck chops fill a 2-quart dish and serve three or four. "1s. per pound" is a shilling a pound, a household price current at the time of printing and of no use as a guide now.
Cassell's fondness for grand-sounding attributions is on display here: "a la Don Pedro" gives a Spanish flourish to what is essentially a covered mutton hotpot of the kind eaten across northern England, the potato crust standing in for pastry. Names like this circulated freely in nineteenth-century cookbooks, sometimes honouring a real patron or chef and often simply borrowed for tone; no particular Don Pedro can be tied to this one. What is genuinely of the period is the vessel. The recipe is built around a purpose-made lidded tin "made expressly for the dish", one of many specialised tinned-steel moulds and bakers sold to Victorian households as cheap stamped tinware became widely available, and the instruction to fill the potato to the brim before putting the lid on is a reminder that these dishes were meant to seal. Fanciful attributions aside, the technique -- cheap chops, a starch lid, long slow heat -- is the same economy that produced Lancashire hotpot and shepherd's pie.