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Mutton Patties
Line some tartlet-moulds with a good paste. Take and pound together an equal weight of lean mutton from the fillet and fat bacon. Season to taste with salt, a very small quantity of spice, and cayenne pepper. Place a round ball of the meat into each patty-pan, cover with paste, and make a small hole in the centre. Bake in a quick oven, and pour into each patty through a funnel a little well-seasoned gravy, or glaze before the patties get cold. Time, about twenty minutes. Probable cost of paste, 1s. 4d. per pound.
A small raised-crust meat pie, closer to a pork pie in construction than to the puff-pastry patties elsewhere in Cassell's. The whole thing turns on getting the meat cooked through in the same twenty minutes the pastry needs.
- Oven heatA "quick oven" is usually taken as somewhere around 400-450F (200-230C). At that heat the crust sets fast enough to hold its shape. Check that the filling has reached 160F (71C) at the centre before you trust the stated twenty minutes.
- Size of the mouldsVictorian tartlet-moulds and patty-pans are generally small and shallow, on the order of 2 to 2.5 inches across. Modern muffin tins are deeper and hold more meat, which may not cook through in twenty minutes; use a shallow tartlet tin or expect to extend the bake.
- The paste"A good paste" here most likely means a short crust or hot-water crust stiff enough to line a mould and take a lid, rather than puff pastry. Puff is unlikely to hold the poured gravy. Cassell's routinely costs pastry by the pound.
- Pounding the meatThe original means a mortar. A food processor pulsed briefly gives the same close, slightly pasty texture; mince from a grinder plate stays looser and the filling crumbles when cut. Equal weights of lean mutton and fat bacon makes a very rich mixture -- close to half of it fatty bacon -- which is what keeps the small ball moist.
- MuttonMutton is sheep over about two years old and is sold now mainly by specialist butchers. Lamb shoulder or leg substitutes directly, though it is milder; a little more of the bacon's cure and the spice compensates.
- "A very small quantity of spice"In this period that usually means mace or a blend of mace, nutmeg and clove. A pinch of ground mace per pound of meat is the conventional reading. The bacon is already salty, so season the mixture lightly and fry a teaspoon of it to taste before filling.
- The steam hole and the gravyThe hole is functional twice over: it vents steam during baking and takes the funnel afterwards. Add the hot gravy or glaze while the patties are still warm so it runs into the gap the meat leaves as it shrinks; once cold it sits on top and leaks.
- YieldA pound of meat mixture will fill roughly a dozen small patties.
Patties in nineteenth-century English cookery were small individual pies, the word usually derived from French pâté rather than having anything to do with a flat cake of meat; Cassell's carries a good many of them, oyster, veal, lobster and chicken among them. Mutton was an everyday British meat of the period, and the pairing with fat bacon here does the same job as the fat pork in a raised pork pie: lean sheep meat on its own bakes dry and grainy in a small quantity. Pouring seasoned gravy or meat glaze in through the vent hole after baking is the same trick used on pork pies, where jellied stock fills the gap left by shrinkage and helps seal the pie for keeping. The costing in shillings and pence, given for the pastry alone, is a reminder that Cassell's was written for households running to a budget.