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Mutton, Casserole of, Plain
The remains of an underdone leg of mutton cut into small neat slices, and seasoned appropriately, may be boiled in a basin with a lining of suet-crust, or in "plain casserole," which is in a mould thickly lined with mashed potatoes. The mould should be very well buttered, and then filled with the meat, moistened with some thick meat-gravy, and finally covered with more mashed potatoes. Turn out on a dish, and have ready some more gravy to serve with it. Bake for half an hour.
A leftover dish: cooked mutton reheated inside a shell of mashed potato, turned out of its mould so it arrives as a domed loaf. The whole thing hangs on the potato being stiff enough to hold its shape when inverted.
- "Plain casserole" means the mouldHere it is specifically a plain mould lined with mashed potato rather than pastry. A 1-quart pudding basin or a straight-sided 6-inch cake tin will serve; nothing is baked in a casserole dish in the modern sense.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake at 350F for the specified half hour, which is enough to heat cooked meat through and set the potato crust without drying the top.
- The potato must be dry and stiffMash made with milk and cream will slump when the mould is turned out. Use floury potatoes, dry them off in the pan after draining, and bind with butter and an egg yolk. Press a layer roughly half an inch thick up the sides.
- "Remains of an underdone leg"Leftover rare roast leg, sliced thin. Thirty minutes at 350F reheats already-cooked meat; it will not cook raw mutton through, so do not substitute uncooked meat and keep the same timing.
- Thick gravy, not thinThin gravy soaks into the potato lining and the loaf collapses on unmoulding. Reduce the meat gravy until it coats a spoon, and keep a second batch of gravy hot to serve at the table as directed.
- "Seasoned appropriately"For mutton that means salt, plenty of black pepper, and traditionally a little onion, chopped parsley or a scrape of mace. Cold mutton is bland and needs more salt than you expect.
- The suet-crust alternativeThe first sentence offers a different treatment: the same meat put into a basin lined with suet-crust and boiled. No time is given for that version, and it would need considerably longer than the half hour specified for the potato one.
- UnmouldingButter the mould heavily, as the recipe directs, and let it stand a few minutes out of the oven before inverting, so the crust firms. Serve at once with the reserved gravy.
Cassell's is a Victorian household dictionary, and this entry belongs to the large body of nineteenth-century cookery devoted to using up the joint. A roast leg of mutton is often said to have been a mainstay of the middle-class Sunday dinner, and printed cookery of the period returned to it again and again in hashes, rissoles, moulds and shapes. The word casserole entered English from French as the name of the pan, and in French practice a casserole de pommes de terre or casserole au riz meant exactly this: a border or case of potato or rice enclosing a filling, moulded and turned out. The modern English sense, in which a casserole is the food rather than the dish, came later. The suet-crust variant mentioned in the first line points to the older, plainer English tradition of the boiled meat pudding.