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MUTTON, MINCED (another way)
Take the remains of a roast leg or loin without fat, mince it very finely, put it into a stewpan with a breakfast-cupful of gravy drawn from the roast to a pound and a half of meat, and season with pepper, salt, and a little grated nutmeg; add a table-spoonful of browned flour, and let the mince heat gradually, but do not let it boil. In twenty minutes serve very hot with poached eggs round the dish; or the mince may be made more savoury by the addition of a dessert-spoonful of walnut ketchup, and the same of walnut pickle, Oude sauce, etc., but less gravy will be required. Minced mutton may be served with a border of macaroni, first boiled tender in salted water, and then stewed after draining in new milk. Four ounces of macaroni will require one quart of water, and when drained from it half a pint of milk will be sufficient; add to the milk an ounce of butter, the half of a small tea-spoonful of made mustard, to which a quarter of a grain of cayenne has been added, and a little salt. Time, half an hour to boil macaroni in water; quarter of an hour in milk. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian way with cold roast mutton, built on the assumption that a large joint and its saved gravy were sitting in the larder. The measurements are period ones and two of the flavourings no longer exist under those names.
- Do not let it boilThis is the hinge. The meat is already cooked; boiling it a second time squeezes out moisture and turns the mince dry and grainy. Keep the pan at a bare shiver for the full twenty minutes, which is enough to bring reheated meat hot through.
- A breakfast-cupfulLarger than a teacup: reckon 10 to 12 fl oz, so roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups of gravy to 1 1/2 lb of minced meat. If you use the bottled sauces mentioned at the end, cut it back to about a cup.
- Gravy drawn from the roastThe recipe assumes the strained, degreased pan juices and any set jelly beneath them. Failing that, use a well-reduced brown stock; a thin stock will leave the mince watery, since nothing here is reduced afterwards.
- Browned flourPlain flour toasted dry in a pan or a low oven until nut-coloured, once a standing pantry item for colouring sauces. It thickens far less than raw flour, so a tablespoon is right for body rather than gluiness. Whisk it into a little cold gravy before adding, or it will lump in the hot pan.
- Walnut ketchup, walnut pickle, Oude sauceWalnut ketchup is a thin, dark, spiced condiment from green walnuts and is still made by a few British firms; mushroom ketchup or Worcestershire gives the same salty-savoury lift. Oude sauce was a proprietary Victorian bottled sauce, named for the north Indian province, and has long since vanished from shelves.
- A quarter of a grain of cayenneAn apothecary's grain is about 65 mg, so a quarter of one is roughly 16 mg. In practice this means the smallest pinch you can pick up, and it is stirred into the mustard, not the mince.
- The macaroniHalf an hour in water and a further quarter hour in milk suits the thick, dry, unenriched macaroni of the period. Modern dried macaroni wants 7 to 9 minutes in the water, then five minutes in the milk with the butter, mustard and salt to finish absorbing and thicken into a border.
- Poached eggsThey are the garnish and the sauce at once, so poach them soft and set them round the dish at the last moment; a firm yolk defeats the point.
- YieldThree to four, as stated, and best treated as a supper dish rather than a dinner course. It does not reheat a third time with any grace.
Minced or hashed mutton is one of the workhorses of the Victorian kitchen, where a large joint was often roasted on Sunday and expected to reappear in altered form for several days after. Cassell's, first issued in parts in the 1870s and reprinted for decades, devotes pages to these re-dressings, reflecting the domestic economy of a middle-class household. The bottled sauces named here are the period's answer to the problem that reheated meat tastes flat, and their commercial popularity in the second half of the century is often linked to this need. The border of macaroni stewed in milk with mustard belongs to the same English tradition that produced macaroni cheese, and treats pasta as a starchy garnish rather than a dish in its own right.