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Mutton Rechauffe
Melt a table-spoonful of butter, add two table-spoonfuls of red currant jelly (best to dissolve it first). Stir; then put in a glass of sherry or Madeira and about half a tea-spoonful of Bovril mixed with a little water. To rub the bottom of the pan with a slice of onion adds to the flavour; or cook a head of garlic in the mixture and remove after a few seconds. Put in the meat, cover, and keep hot for a few minutes. Try beef the same way, adding a little mustard and port instead of the wines named above.
A sauce for reheating yesterday's roast, written for cooks who had cold mutton on hand every Monday. The whole thing takes under ten minutes, and the one rule is that the meat must be warmed, not cooked again.
- The hinge: never let it simmerSliced roast mutton or beef is already cooked through; boiling it in the sauce squeezes out juices and turns the slices grey and stringy. Bring the sauce to a bare quiver, slide the meat in, cover, and hold off the heat for three or four minutes until just hot.
- "A glass" of sherryGenuinely imprecise in Victorian cookery writing; a wineglassful was usually reckoned at roughly 2 fl oz, though usage varied. Start with 3 tablespoons for a sauce serving two or three, and add more only after tasting, since the jelly is already sweet.
- BovrilStill sold, and still the right thing: a salty concentrated beef extract. Half a teaspoon slaked in a tablespoon of hot water is what is wanted. Any beef bouillon paste or a very small amount of demi-glace does the same job; a stock cube will read saltier, so use a third of one.
- Red currant jellyDissolve it over low heat as directed, or it sits in lumps and scorches. If you cannot find it, a tart apple or quince jelly works; grape jelly is too sweet and too grapey.
- "A head of garlic"In books of this vintage "head" may sometimes be used loosely for a single clove, though that is not certain. A whole bulb steeped for a few seconds would give almost nothing; the practical reading is one peeled clove, bruised, and lifted out before serving.
- Quantities and yieldAs written this makes roughly half a cup of sauce — enough for four to six slices of cold roast, serving two. Double everything for a family portion; the butter and jelly scale cleanly.
- The beef variationPort and mustard in place of sherry. Add the mustard off the heat at the end, English or Dijon, about half a teaspoon; cooked hard it loses its bite and can turn bitter.
- ServingThe sauce is thin by design, so give it something to sit on: mashed or boiled potatoes, or toast. Spoon the sauce over the meat rather than serving it separately.
Réchauffé is simply French for "reheated," and a whole genre of Victorian and Edwardian recipes carries the word: the Sunday joint was large, refrigeration was a cool larder at best, and cold meat had to reappear on Monday and Tuesday in a form that did not announce itself as leftovers. Currant jelly with mutton is older than the book — the pairing of sharp fruit jelly with roast mutton and lamb appears in English cookery well before the nineteenth century. What dates this particular version is the Bovril: the beef extract was commercialised in Britain in the 1880s, and it gave the domestic cook a shortcut to the deep savour a professional kitchen got from a stockpot.