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Pepper and Salt (One dessertspoonful of chopped)
One dessertspoonful of chopped Mushrooms.
Bone a shoulder of mutton, mix all the above ingredients well together and stuff the mutton with them, roll it up into a neat shape not too long, sew it up, braise it in the stock for about two hours according to size. When done, take it out and glaze it: serve with brown or piquante sauce. This joint is very nice baked.
This entry has been sheared off from the head of its own ingredient list — the title line and first sentence are the tail end of a stuffing that began on the previous page, so what survives is the method rather than the full formula. Everything below assumes you are supplying a forcemeat of your own.
- The missing stuffingAll that remains of the mixture is pepper and salt and a dessertspoonful of chopped mushrooms. A standard Victorian veal forcemeat for this purpose runs to breadcrumbs, chopped suet or butter, parsley, lemon rind, a little chopped shallot or onion, the mushrooms, and egg to bind — roughly 4 oz crumbs to 2 oz fat and one egg for a shoulder. Any current forcemeat recipe will do the same job.
- DessertspoonfulReckon two teaspoons, or about 10 ml. Victorian dessertspoons sat between the teaspoon and the tablespoon in size, though spoon sizes were not standardised and varied from household to household.
- Mutton, and what to buyMutton means sheep over a year old, with darker meat and a much stronger flavour. It is sold by some halal and specialist butchers but is uncommon; a boned shoulder of lamb, 3-4 lb after boning, can be stuffed and rolled in the same way, though as younger meat it may be tender rather sooner, so test it before the full two hours are up.
- Boning and tyingAsk the butcher to bone the shoulder and leave it in one flat piece. The instruction to sew it up is sound — a trussing needle and butcher's twine hold a stuffed joint far better than string alone, though tying at 1-inch intervals over the seam is an acceptable substitute.
- The braise is the hingeTwo hours is right, but only if the stock comes no more than two-thirds up the joint and never boils. A bare tremble at 300-325F gives you a shoulder that slices; a rolling boil squeezes the meat and pushes the stuffing out through the seam.
- GlazingTo glaze meant to brush the joint with reduced, gelatinous stock — the braising liquid boiled down hard until it coats a spoon — then return it briefly to a hot oven for shine. Modern stock from a carton has too little gelatine to do this; reduce a homemade veal or lamb stock, or add a little gelatine.
- "Very nice baked"For the baked version, roast uncovered at 325-350F, allowing about 30 minutes per pound of stuffed weight plus 30 minutes, and rest the joint 15-20 minutes before slicing so the forcemeat sets and the slices hold.
- YieldA stuffed shoulder of this size serves six to eight. It slices neatly once cold, though the recipe as written serves it hot with brown or piquante sauce.
A boned, stuffed and rolled shoulder was the professional cook's answer to an awkward joint: the shoulder is a puzzle of bone and sinew that carves badly on the bone, so the kitchen removed the bones, filled the cavity with forcemeat, and turned the whole thing into a neat cylinder that could be sliced into even rounds. Braising it in stock rather than roasting it was the more genteel treatment, and French practice is often said to lie behind the fashion in British high-class cookery, which may also be why the accompanying sauces are named as brown and piquante rather than as gravy. Mutton, not lamb, was the ordinary meat of the period; British flocks were kept for wool as well as meat and animals were generally allowed to reach some maturity before slaughter, giving a strong flavour. The recipe adds that the joint is also "very nice baked."