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MUTTON, SCRAG OF (a la Menehould)
Soak in warm water and wash the undivided scrag end of the neck of mutton; drain, sprinkle lightly with pepper, and hang it for a couple of days. Slice three or four young carrots, and divide into quarters three middle-sized onions, line the bottom of a stewpan with thin slices of fat bacon, lay in the scrag, with slices of bacon over the top, and the vegetables which have been sliced, with a couple of bay-leaves, a sprig of thyme, marjoram, and basil, a small bunch of parsley, thirty white peppercorns, and as much liquor from the boiling of a knuckle or scrag of veal as will cover the meat well. Prepare a cupful of bread-crumbs, seasoned with pepper and salt, and when the meat is tender drain it from the gravy in which it has stewed; cover with the seasoned crumbs, and brown in a quick oven, or with a salamander. Time, four hours to stew. Probable cost, 8d. per pound.
A two-stage braise: the neck is stewed slowly in a bacon-lined pan, then crumbed and browned. Most of what needs translating is the cut, the vessel and the finish.
- The hinge: crumb it hotThe crumbs go on while the meat is hot and still damp from the braise, which is what makes them stick without egg or butter.
- Scrag endThe bony top of the neck, sold today as neck of lamb (the middle neck is the joint immediately below it); an undivided scrag is mostly bone and connective tissue, and its weight varies with the animal. Ask a butcher to keep it in one piece. Mutton proper (generally sheep over two years) is rare outside specialist suppliers; hogget or lamb neck works, though lamb will be tender well before four hours.
- The two-day hangThis assumed a cold larder in cool weather, which most kitchens no longer have. Age it uncovered on a rack in the refrigerator instead, and discard it if it smells sour rather than simply gamey.
- Bacon for barding'Fat bacon' here is likely to have been a mild, quite possibly unsmoked cure, closer to fresh pork belly or salt pork than to modern heavily smoked streaky. Heavily smoked bacon will dominate the herbs and the veal stock.
- Veal liquorThe braising liquid is the water from boiling a veal knuckle, i.e. an unsalted, lightly gelatinous white stock. Unsalted chicken stock cut with water is the nearest supermarket equivalent; season at the end, since the bacon contributes salt.
- Thirty white peppercornsAbout half a teaspoon. They go in whole, so the heat is mild and aromatic rather than sharp.
- Four hours to stewKeep it at a bare shiver, never a rolling boil, or the meat shreds off the bone before it can be lifted out whole. A covered pot in a 300F oven holds the temperature more reliably than a burner. Lamb may be done in two to two and a half hours; test for a knife sliding in without resistance.
- Quick oven, or a salamanderA quick oven is usually reckoned at about 400-425F. A salamander was a heated iron plate held over food to brown it; the modern overhead broiler does the same job in three or four minutes, watched closely.
- YieldA whole scrag serves three or four, generously with the strained braising liquid reduced as gravy. The eightpence a pound is the book's estimate for the finished dish, not for the raw cut alone.
The name points to Sainte-Menehould, a town in the Marne, and to a method rather than a single dish: something braised until it gives way completely, then coated in seasoned crumbs and browned. The style is most famously associated with pigs' trotters, cooked so long the bones soften, and the technique is generally traced to that town's kitchens. Cassell's applies it here to the scrag end of the neck, the bony, sinewy top of the sheep's neck that sold for a fraction of the price of a chop, and the logic is the same: a long, aromatic braise breaks down what is otherwise tough, and the crumb crust supplies the browning and texture a stewed cut cannot give itself. That a Victorian household dictionary lists the price per pound alongside the herbs tells you who the entry was for -- cooks working a budget, who needed to know that four hours of a low fire could turn eightpenny meat into something with a French name.