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Mutton, Shoulder of, Stuffed
Having boned a shoulder of mutton, and trimmed off the excess of fat, stretch it out on a pasteboard, and sprinkle over it pepper and salt. Make a sausage-meat with equal quantities of lean pork and bacon (a pound in all), seasoned with pepper, salt, and a little mace; pound these in a mortar, and stuff the shoulder; then round it to a nice shape, having first secured the forcemeat; use strong thread, and if properly and carefully done there is no fear of the sausage-meat leaving its place. Put the stuffed shoulder in a large stewpan containing some melted butter, and brown slightly both sides of it. Pour in a quart of good broth or water, and when it has boiled, and been skimmed, add a bunch of savoury herbs, an onion, a carrot, a handful of button mushrooms, and two cloves; simmer until done, basting the meat often with the gravy during the last half hour. Serve the meat on a hot dish; strain and take off all fat from the gravy, keep the meat hot before the fire, return the gravy to a small stewpan, and boil rapidly until it is reduced in quantity; then pour it over the meat, and garnish with glazed onions. Time to brown, seven or eight minutes for each side; to dress altogether, two hours and a half. Probable cost, 9 1/2d. to 10d. per pound. Sufficient for seven or eight persons.
A boned shoulder braised around a pork forcemeat — essentially a rolled, stuffed roast cooked in liquid rather than dry heat. The whole success of it rests on the tying.
- The hinge: sew before you rollThe instruction to "secure the forcemeat" first and only then round the joint into shape is the one step that decides the dish. Close the seam with butcher's twine at short intervals, then tie crosswise every inch or so; a loose roll lets the sausage-meat push out during two and a half hours of simmering.
- The jointA shoulder of mutton was typically a bone-in joint of roughly 5-7 lb, though weights varied and the recipe gives none. Mutton is scarce outside halal and specialist butchers; a boned lamb shoulder of 3-4 lb behaves the same way but will be milder and may be done nearer two hours. Ask the butcher to bone and leave it flat rather than tunnel-boning it.
- Forcemeat quantities"A pound in all" means 8 oz lean pork and 8 oz bacon together, not a pound of each. A food processor replaces the mortar in about thirty seconds — pulse to a coarse paste, not a purée. "A little mace" is around 1/4 teaspoon ground.
- BrothA quart here is an imperial quart, 40 fl oz or about 1.1 litres, enough to come partway up the joint in a close-fitting stewpan rather than to cover it. Turn the meat once at the halfway point if it stands above the liquid.
- Keep it at a bare simmerThe original says simmer, and it matters: a rolling boil squeezes the shoulder tight and dries the forcemeat. Bubbles should just break the surface — on a modern hob that is usually the lowest useful setting. The recipe is a stovetop braise and gives no oven temperature.
- Cook the stuffing throughPork forcemeat inside a rolled joint sits at the coolest point. Check the centre reaches 165F before serving; at two and a half hours of true simmering it will, but a thermometer settles it.
- Button mushrooms and glazed onions"A handful" is perhaps 4-6 oz. The glazed onions of the garnish are small peeled onions cooked in butter with a little sugar and stock until brown and syrupy — prepare them separately while the meat is kept hot before the fire.
- Reducing the gravyStrain, skim, then boil hard until it coats a spoon — expect to lose half to two thirds of the volume, which takes 10-15 minutes in a wide pan. No thickening is called for and none is needed.
- Yield and costSeven or eight portions, as stated. The price of 9 1/2d to 10d per pound is pre-decimal British currency and is there for the household accounts, not for you.
Cassell's belongs to the long stretch of British cookery when mutton, not lamb, was the ordinary butcher's meat — sheep were kept for wool and eaten when mature, giving a darker, stronger joint that rewarded slow moist cooking. Stuffing a boned shoulder with a pork-and-bacon forcemeat is a thrifty French-influenced technique (the browning in butter, the bouquet of herbs, the reduced strained gravy, the glazed onion garnish all read as épaule d'agneau farcie), and it does two useful things at once: it makes an awkward, fatty, oddly shaped cut carve into neat rounds, and it stretches the meat with cheaper pork. The per-pound costing at the end is characteristic of Victorian household dictionaries, which were bought as much for budgeting as for cooking. Mutton's near-disappearance from English-speaking markets came later, generally traced to the twentieth-century preference for young lamb and to wartime and post-war shifts in sheep farming.