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Mutton Hash
1 heaping tablespoonful (1 oz.) butter. 1 heaping tablespoonful (1 oz.) flour. 1 celery stalk. 1/2 pint (1 cup) stock. 1 small onion. Some cold mutton Bunch sweet herbs oz.) butter I small onion oz.) flour I celery stalk Salt and pepper Some mashed potatoes I heaping tablespoonful (I 2 parsley sprigs Melt the butter in an earthenware pan, and when quite hot, brown the onion sliced, then the flour; add the stock, which may be made by stewing the bones with one onion, carrot, turnip, and a blade of mace; when boiling, add the celery, herbs, parsley,
The text has come through garbled, with the ingredient column collapsed into the method, and it breaks off before the meat goes in. The bones of the dish are still legible: a brown onion-and-flour roux, a bone stock, cold roast mutton warmed through in it, and mashed potato as the border or lid.
- Reading the ingredient listUntangled, it is: cold mutton, butter (the quantity is lost, only the "oz." of the parenthetical survives), 1 heaping tablespoonful (1 oz) flour, 1 small onion, 1 celery stalk, a bunch of sweet herbs, 2 parsley sprigs, salt and pepper, and mashed potatoes. If the butter was an ounce, as the layout suggests, that is the equal-weights butter-and-flour roux of a brown sauce.
- The stock is unmeasuredNo quantity is given, and none can be inferred honestly. For 1 oz flour, about 1 pint (2 cups) of stock gives a sauce that coats without gluing; start there and judge by eye.
- "Sweet herbs"Not sweet in the sugar sense — the period term for the mild culinary herbs, typically thyme, marjoram and a bay leaf tied with the parsley. Tie them so they can be lifted out before serving.
- The earthenware panEarthenware over direct flame is unreliable on modern hobs, and will not work at all on induction, which needs a ferrous base; a heavy enamelled cast-iron pan does the same job.
- Brown the flour properlyThis is the hinge. The onion and then the flour must take real colour in the butter — several minutes to a nut brown — before the stock goes in, or the hash tastes raw and pallid. Add the stock off the heat and whisk to avoid lumps.
- How the mutton goes inCold cooked mutton, cut in neat slices or dice, is added at the end and brought only to a bare simmer for a few minutes. Boiling already-roasted mutton in the sauce makes it stringy and dry.
- MaceThe stock calls for a blade of mace, the lacy husk of the nutmeg sold whole in blades or ground. A quarter teaspoon of ground mace is a fair substitute; nutmeg is close but sharper.
- The potatoThe text breaks off before the potato is dealt with. Either finish will serve: piped as a border round the dish and browned, or spread over the top and glazed under a hot grill.
- YieldDepends entirely on the leftover joint; 1 lb of picked cold mutton with a pint of sauce and potato serves four.
Cold-meat cookery had a whole chapter to itself in household books of this kind because a large roasting joint was the norm and thrift was a moral matter as much as an economic one. Mutton — the meat of a mature sheep, stronger and firmer than lamb, and now sold in Britain largely through halal butchery — was the everyday roast of British kitchens well into the twentieth century, which is why so many recipes exist for what to do with it on Monday. The instruction to make stock from the bones with an onion, carrot, turnip and a blade of mace is the ordinary practice of a kitchen where nothing left the house until it had given up everything it had.