Maclyn Arbuckle
A BOWIE COUNTY
MINT JULEP
Large metal cup, lemonade size. Water sufficient to cover lump of sugar. Pinch top from tender branch of mint. Drop mint into sugar and water.
Fill cup with ice one inch from top. Use long-handle bar spoon. Begin mixing ice, sugar and water.
Do not place hand on body of cup. The mint will be bruised but not crushed, thereby retaining flavor of mint without essence.
Continue mixing until cup is well frosted-add more ice. Pour in GENTLEMAN'S drink of good bourbon.
Continue mixing and frosting. Add teaspoon of brandy. Select branches of mint to tower three or four inches above cup. Decorate interior of cup with this mint.
Arrange opening in mint for attack. Serve on tray.
Finger prints of recipient only should appear on cup. With each swallow, inhale through the mint.
Straws are absolutely barred!
Maclyn Arbe Jedge nearly
RACK OF SPRING LAMB-FANNIE WARD
Bone out rack of spring lamb and stuff with following stuffing: ¼ lb. of sausage meat ¼ lb. foie-gras ¼ lb. truffles in squares ¼ lb. mushrooms in squares Roll the rack and tie up with string. Place in copper pan with some carrots and onions sliced, thyme and bay leaf, and color in the oven for a few minutes. Cover with some good meat stock and allow to cook for three-quarters of an hour.
To serve: dress the rack on oval entré dish and garnish with braised lettuce, new peas, carrots glazed and new potatoes fried brown in butter.
Gravy of the liquid from lamb reduced and strained.
Sincerely yours,
Two recipes are jammed together on this page: Arbuckle's julep, which is a set of procedural rules more than a list of quantities, and a fragment of Fannie Ward's braised rack of lamb. Both assume a cook who already knows the shape of the dish.
- The hinge: never touch the cupThe whole method exists to build an exterior frost on the metal, and a warm palm on the body of the cup undoes it. Hold the cup by the rim or the foot, or work with a folded napkin, and stir only with the long spoon.
- "Large metal cup, lemonade size"Likely something in the 12 to 16 oz range. Silver or pewter frosts best; a stainless steel tumbler will do, and glass frosts far less readily.
- The bourbon is unmeasuredA "GENTLEMAN'S drink" is deliberately vague and no conversion can be honest. Something in the region of 2 to 3 oz suits a cup this size; the teaspoon of brandy goes in at the end, as directed.
- IcePeriod bars worked from a block, shaved or cracked to order. Crushed ice from a bag is the nearest equivalent; cubes will not frost the cup and will not pack around the mint.
- Bruised, not crushedMuddling mint hard is generally held to release the bitter "essence" Arbuckle is warning against. The leaves are meant to be knocked about by the stirring spoon and ice only, which is why the mint goes in with the sugar and water before the ice.
- The mint bouquet is functionalThe tower of sprigs is aroma, not garnish, which is the actual reason straws are barred: a straw takes the drink past the nose. Slap the bouquet once between the palms before setting it in.
- YieldOne cup, one drinker. Nothing about the frosting technique scales to a pitcher.
- Ward's lamb: read "14 lb." as a quarter poundThe fractions have lost their slashes in printing. The stuffing is 1/4 lb each of sausage meat, foie gras, diced truffle and diced mushroom, about a pound of forcemeat for a boned rack.
- "Color in the oven"An initial browning in a hot oven; the recipe says only "a few minutes" and gives no temperature. After that it is a braise: covered with stock and held at a bare simmer for the stated three-quarters of an hour.
- Stuffed lamb is not cooked rareBecause raw sausage meat is rolled into the center, the interior needs to reach 160F, unlike a plain rack. A thermometer in the stuffing is the only way to confirm it.
- The sauce"Gravy of the liquid from lamb reduced and strained" means exactly that: skim the fat, strain out the carrot, onion, thyme and bay, and reduce until it coats a spoon. No thickener is intended.
Bowie County sits in the far northeast corner of Texas, up against Arkansas and the Red River, which is to say in the part of the state settled largely from the Upper South and thoroughly julep country. Arbuckle was born in Texas in 1866 and built a career on courtly Southern and Texan gentlemen, most famously in The Round-Up, and this contribution is written in that voice from the first line to the last: the emphasis on frost, on the silver cup, on inhaling through the mint, and on straws as a species of insult. The julep itself is older than the bourbon in it, appearing in American sources by the early nineteenth century as a sweetened spirituous morning drink, and its association with mint, shaved ice and metal cups hardened over the course of the century as ice became cheap. The insistence that only the recipient's fingerprints appear on the cup is a bartender's flourish rather than a documented rule, but it captures the point of the whole exercise: the drink is served, and drunk, before the frost goes.