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Potato Pie (Remains of cold mutton either)
The remains of cold mutton, either roasted or boiled, cut into nice slices, three hard-boiled eggs, also sliced, and two or three potatoes, seasoning of pepper, salt, and pounded mace to your tasty.
All laid alternately in a baking-dish and filled nearly up with any gravy or stock at hand; cover with a potato crust, full two inches thick, and bake until the potatoes are a nice brown color. If the potatoes are scratched over with a fork, it gives them a pretty, rough appearance. To make the crusts, boil and mash the potatoes with a little butter and milk and a small quantity of salt.--Mrs. R. P.
A cottage-pie variant that uses up a joint of cold mutton, with a mashed-potato lid rather than pastry. The hinge is that nothing in the dish is really being cooked through — it is being heated and browned — so the sliced potatoes inside must go in already tender.
- Par-cook the sliced potatoesThe recipe gives no baking time, only "bake until the potatoes are a nice brown color," which is the lid browning rather than the filling cooking. That is unlikely to be long enough to cook raw potato slices in gravy, so boil or steam them until just tender before layering, or they will stay chalky.
- Oven temperatureThe original gives none. Bake at 375-400F: hot enough to brown the potato lid and reduce the gravy, not so hot that the edges scorch before the middle is bubbling.
- Pounded maceMace is the outer covering of the nutmeg seed, sold today ground or in blades. Ground mace is far finer than anything pounded in a mortar, so start with a quarter teaspoon for the whole dish; it turns soapy quickly.
- "Full two inches thick"That is a substantial mash lid, and for it to hold that height it must be stiff — mash the potatoes dry, then add butter and only enough milk to bring them together. A loose mash will slump into the gravy.
- The fork scratchingNot decoration alone. Ridges raised with a fork give the fat and heat more surface to work on and produce the browned peaks; smooth mash browns pale and evenly.
- Gravy or stock"Any gravy or stock at hand" suggests a kitchen with drippings or a stockpot to draw on. Use well-flavoured lamb or beef stock, and thicken it lightly first -- thin stock will boil up through the potato and waterlog it.
- MuttonMutton is meat from a mature sheep, usually reckoned at over about two years old, stronger and fattier than lamb, and in most places today sold mainly by halal and specialist butchers. Leftover roast leg or shoulder of lamb works, with a slightly firmer hand with the pepper.
- YieldThe remains of a joint, three eggs and a few potatoes make enough for four as a main course. Let it stand ten minutes out of the oven so the gravy sets enough to cut.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named and initialled Virginia housekeepers, which is why this entry ends with "Mrs. R. P." rather than a household voice. The dish belongs to the large nineteenth-century family of made-over meat pies — cottage pie, shepherd's pie, and their many local cousins — whose purpose was to get a second dinner out of a Sunday joint before it spoiled, in kitchens with a larder rather than refrigeration. Sliced hard-boiled egg layered into savoury pies is often said to have been common in the period, inherited from English cookery, where it padded out a thin quantity of meat and gave the cut surface something to look at. Mace, now an unfamiliar seasoning in most kitchens, was one of the routine spices of Anglo-American meat cookery both well before and well after 1879.