Home › The Principles of Cookery › Mutton, with Mushrooms
Mutton, with Mushrooms
Peel four or five flap mushrooms, and wash, but drain well; take thin slices from an underdone leg of mutton, about a pound, season them with cayenne and pepper, a quarter of a grain of the former mixed with a salt-spoonful of the latter, and a tea-spoonful of salt; add a shredded onion, and a piece of garlic the size of a pea. Lay half the seasoned mutton into a pie-dish, and on it place the mushrooms, which should be large enough to take a piece of butter about a quarter of an ounce in weight. Fill the dish with the remainder of the mutton, put bits of butter over the top, and pour in a quarter of a pint of gravy from the roast or the boiling of the bone, to which a little pounded mace has been added. Cover with another dish, and bake slowly. Time, three-quarters of an hour to bake. Probable cost, 6d., exclusive of the meat. Sufficient for three persons.
N
A dish for the day after a roast: cold underdone mutton reheated gently under a lid so it finishes cooking in its own gravy rather than drying out. The whole thing depends on keeping the heat low.
- Slow ovenThe book gives no temperatures; "bake slowly" is usually taken to mean a low oven, around 300F (150C). Keep the heat gentle, or the thin slices of already-cooked meat toughen; the three-quarters of an hour is meant as a bare simmer under cover.
- Flap mushroomsMature, fully opened field mushrooms with black gills. Large portobellos are the direct equivalent. Peeling is optional with modern cultivated caps, but do trim the stalks and keep them dry-ish, since they release a lot of liquid.
- Cayenne by the grainA grain is about 65 mg, so a quarter grain is only a few specks, very much less than an eighth of a teaspoon. A salt-spoonful is conventionally reckoned at about a quarter teaspoon, here of black pepper.
- Gravy quantityA quarter of an imperial pint is 5 imperial fl oz, about 140 ml, or a generous half US cup. Use skimmed roasting juices or the broth from simmering the leg bone; unsalted stock works, but taste before adding the full teaspoon of salt.
- Pounded maceMace is the outer coat of the nutmeg, warmer and less sweet. A quarter teaspoon of ground mace in the gravy is right for this volume; grated nutmeg substitutes at slightly less.
- Covering with another dishAn inverted plate or shallow dish over the pie-dish is a steam seal. A tight lid or a double layer of foil crimped to the rim does the same job; without it the meat dries and the gravy reduces to nothing.
- Mutton or lambMutton is meat from a mature sheep, usually reckoned at over a year old and often two, with a stronger flavour. Cold rare roast leg of lamb behaves the same way here, and a pound of it, sliced thin, feeds three as the book says.
- GarlicA piece "the size of a pea" is a fraction of a clove — this is Victorian restraint. Half a small clove, minced, is closer to what a modern palate expects without overturning the dish.
Cassell's belonged to the era when a large joint was roasted for Sunday and reappeared in other forms for the rest of the week, and the dictionary carries many second-day mutton entries — hashed, minced, curried, baked with mushrooms. The instruction to take slices from an *underdone* leg is the practical heart of it: meat left rare in the middle will not be overcooked when reheated. "Flaps" are the broad, open field mushrooms of late summer pasture, and the dish is costed at sixpence apart from the meat. The first Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery appeared in the 1870s.