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Mutton Chops en Casserole
Melt two tablespoons of butter, add three slices of onion, and saute in it the chops cut from a shoulder of mutton.
Place in a casserole one-quarter cup each of carrots, turnips, celery and onion, lay the chops on top of the vegetables and add one cup of stock or hot water. Cover and cook about one and one-half hours, season with salt and pepper, add three potatoes cut in slices and parboiled and more stock if necessary. Cover and cook until tender. Remove cover to brown the chops and potatoes. Serve from the casserole.
A straightforward braise of shoulder chops in a covered pot. The recipe assumes a heavy earthenware or enameled casserole that can go on the stove or into the oven, and it assumes mutton, which almost no American butcher sells now.
- Mutton or lambMutton is sheep over about two years old: darker, stronger, and tougher, which is why it gets ninety minutes covered. Lamb shoulder chops are the practical substitute and will be tender in about an hour, so check earlier.
- The vesselA "casserole" in this book means a lidded pot, not the shallow baked dish the word now suggests. A 3- to 4-quart Dutch oven is the right modern equivalent, and its heavy lid does the same work as the original earthenware.
- Heat levelNo temperature is given at all. Either a bare simmer on the stovetop or a moderate oven around 325F will do the job. Anything brisker risks boiling the liquid away before the meat is tender.
- The vegetable measuresA quarter cup each of carrots, turnips, celery and onion, presumably diced, and a small amount by modern taste. They function as a flavor bed under the meat rather than as a side dish; double them if you want vegetables to serve.
- Season early, not lateThe direction to season after an hour and a half is worth ignoring in part. Salt the chops before browning so the seasoning reaches the meat, then correct the liquid at the end.
- Parboiled potatoesSlice them about a quarter inch thick and boil three or four minutes only, so they finish in the pot without collapsing into the sauce.
- The uncovered finishThis is the step that makes the dish. Take the lid off for the last 15 to 20 minutes, and if you are on the stovetop move the pot to a 425F oven or under the broiler so the chops and potato slices color and the liquid reduces to a glaze.
- YieldThe original gives no number of chops and no yield; with three potatoes it is plainly a small family dish, so scale the chops to the number at table. Serving "from the casserole" was part of the point, the pot going to the table.
Shoulder chops were the cheap end of the sheep, well marbled but sinewy, and the usual treatment for them in American and English cookery was long, moist, covered cooking with root vegetables. The en casserole label reflects a fashion around the turn of the twentieth century for French-named dishes cooked and served in a single lidded earthenware pot, a fashion well represented in domestic-science cookbooks of the era. Mutton was still sold in American markets in this period; American consumption of it fell off through the first half of the century, and the shift is usually attributed to the strong flavor of meat from wool breeds and to the marketing of lamb as the milder choice. The potatoes added late and browned uncovered are household economy at work: one pot, meat and vegetables and starch finished together.