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Ragout Powder
Take one ounce of grated lemon-rind, one ounce of ground black pepper, one ounce of dry mustard, half an ounce of grated nutmeg, half an ounce of powdered ginger, a quarter of an ounce of cayenne, a quarter of an ounce of powdered mace, and a quarter of an ounce of powdered cloves. Dry these ingredients before a very gentle fire; they must be placed at some distance from it, and dried very slowly, or their flavour will evaporate. Pound them thoroughly in a marble mortar, mix with them two ounces of salt, and pass the powder through a fine hair sieve. Put the powder into small bottles perfectly dry, cork these down tightly, and store in a dry place. A small portion added to ragouts and sauces will impart an agreeable flavour.
A dry seasoning blend of the kind Victorian kitchens kept ready-mixed. Everything here is still available; the only real work is drying the lemon rind without cooking the aroma out of it.
- The hinge: dry it slowlyThe whole point of the gentle, distant fire is that volatile citrus oils and the aromatics in mace and cloves are driven off by heat. The nearest modern equivalent is to spread the grated rind and ground spices on a tray in the oven at its lowest setting — as close to 150F/65C as it will go, door propped open — until the rind is brittle, usually an hour or two. A dehydrator at 105-115F does it better.
- What the quantities come to4.75 oz (about 135 g) of aromatics plus 2 oz (about 57 g) salt, so roughly 190 g of finished powder. Halving or quartering the batch is sensible unless you cook ragouts weekly.
- Lemon rindGrate only the yellow zest; the white pith turns bitter as it dries. Reckon on four or five large unwaxed lemons for an ounce of loose zest. Scrub waxed fruit in hot water first.
- Dry mustardMustard powder, i.e. Colman's or an equivalent ground yellow/brown mustard. It contributes little flavour in the jar and only wakes up when the powder meets moisture in the pan.
- GrindingA marble mortar is authentic but a spice or coffee grinder is faster and gives a finer result. Grind the dried lemon rind separately first — it is fibrous and will otherwise leave threads that clog the sieve.
- The sieve step mattersSifting removes the woody bits of mace and clove husk that never break down. What stays behind in the sieve can go back through the grinder once, then be discarded.
- Storage and shelf lifeSmall bottles presumably limit how often the bulk of the powder is exposed to air and damp. Use small screw-top jars, keep them dark as well as dry, and expect the blend to be at its best for about three months; a dry powder keeps indefinitely without spoiling, but the aroma fades.
- How much to useThe original says only "a small portion"; a quarter to half a teaspoon per pint of sauce or stew, stirred in near the end, is a reasonable starting point. It is salted, so season the dish afterwards, not before.
Ragoût comes from the French ragoûter, to revive the taste, and by the nineteenth century the word covered any well-seasoned stew of meat cut small in a rich sauce. Ready-mixed seasoning powders of this sort were a fixture of the English kitchen from the eighteenth century onward, appearing under names like kitchen pepper, savoury spice and ragout powder — the household equivalent of the compounded spice mixtures a professional cook would keep in his store. The proportions here, heavy on pepper and mustard with cloves and mace in the background, are recognisably the same family as the spicing used in potted meats and store sauces of the period.