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Sheep's Mince
Wash and soak a sheep's heart and liver. Cleanse them thoroughly, plunge them into boiling water, and simmer gently about half an hour. Take them up, let them cool, and mince finely. Dissolve a small lump of butter in a saucepan, work into it a little flour to make a smooth paste, and stir it briskly over the fire until it is lightly browned. Mix with it as much of the liquor in which the liver and heart were boiled as will make sauce of the consistency of thick cream. Add pepper and salt and a dessert-spoonful of chopped onion. Put in the mince, and simmer all gently together until done enough. Stir in a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup or any good store sauce, and serve very hot. The remains of sheep's heart and liver may be served in this way. Time to simmer the mince, about half an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A thrifty offal dish built on a brown roux and the offal's own cooking liquor. The main risk is texture: liver that has been boiled half an hour and then simmered another half hour turns chalky, so treat the two organs differently.
- Cook the heart and liver separatelyHeart is dense muscle and genuinely wants 30-40 minutes of gentle simmering; lamb's liver is done in 8-10 minutes and goes grainy beyond that. Poach the heart first, add the liver near the end, and keep the liquor from both.
- Buy lamb, not muttonA modern lamb's heart runs around 5-7 oz and a whole liver nearer a pound, which together is roughly right for this quantity of sauce. Ask a butcher; supermarket offal may be pork or ox rather than lamb.
- SoakingThe washing and soaking is to draw out blood. An hour in cold water, or in milk, is plenty. Trim the heart of its interior valves and gristle before poaching, and pull the membrane off the liver.
- "A small lump of butter"Read this as about 1 oz butter to 1 oz flour, which will thicken something like half a pint of liquor to the stated consistency of thick cream; the recipe fixes no quantity, telling you only to add as much as makes the right consistency. Brown the roux over moderate heat until it smells nutty and takes on a fawn colour.
- The cooking liquorOffal liquor is strong and can be bitter. Skim it well and taste before you commit the whole quantity; slacken with water or a light stock if it is too assertive.
- Mushroom ketchup and "store sauce"Mushroom ketchup was a thin, dark, salty mushroom extract kept in the larder for exactly this purpose. It is still made; Worcestershire sauce or a spoonful of soy plus a dash of vinegar stands in for the salt-and-umami effect.
- MincingChop by hand or pulse briefly. A food processor run continuously will turn cooked liver to paste and the dish loses its point, which is the coarse texture against the smooth sauce.
- Serving and costThree to four portions, as stated. Serve on toast, with mashed potato, or with plain boiled rice. The "1s. 6d." is late-Victorian retail pricing and has no useful modern equivalent beyond telling you this was cheap food.
Cassell's places this among the economy dishes that made up much of a Victorian household's meat cookery: heart and liver were the cheapest parts of the carcass, sold together with the lungs and windpipe as a sheep's "pluck". The technique here is the standard English mince cut fine and bound in a brown sauce made from its own broth, the same treatment given to cold roast beef or mutton the day after a joint, and the closing note that "the remains of sheep's heart and liver may be served in this way" shows its real function as a leftovers formula. The finishing spoonful of mushroom ketchup is characteristic of the period; bottled mushroom or walnut ketchup was often kept as a shortcut to depth in a plain flour-and-stock sauce. The same pluck, minced with oatmeal and suet rather than sauce, is the basis of Scottish haggis.