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Mutton Turnovers
Mix together 3 cupfuls of flour, 1/2 teaspoonful of salt and 2 scant teaspoonfuls of baking-powder, sift, then rub in 3 tablespoonfuls of butter, working thoroughly until the mixture is almost as fine as coarse meal. Mix to a soft dough with sweet milk, turn on a floured board and knead for a moment, then roll out a quarter of an inch thick.
Cut in four-inch squares or circles. Put through the chopper some cold lean mutton. Measure, and for each packed cupful add 1 tablespoonful of grated onion, 1/4 of a teaspoonful of cinnamon and a slight seasoning of salt and pepper.
Moisten slightly with equal parts of good gravy and tomato catsup; 2 tablespoonfuls to the cupful will probably be sufficient. On each piece of paste lay 1 spoonful of the mixture, double the paste, wet the edges slightly with water or white of egg, double and pinch them securely together.
Brush the top of each with a little beaten egg yolk, lay well apart on a flat pan and bake in a quick oven. This simple recipe may be somewhat elaborated by substituting puff paste and frying in deep fat instead of baking; but the recipe as given is more suitable for children.
A biscuit-dough pasty built from leftover roast mutton. The dough is a plain baking-powder short crust, so speed matters more than technique: mix, roll and get it into a hot oven before the leavening spends itself.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives no degrees; a "quick oven" is usually taken as somewhere around 400-450F. Figure roughly 15-20 minutes, until the crust is set and the egg wash has browned. The filling is already cooked, so the crust dictates the time.
- The garbled cinnamon measure"4 of a teaspoonful of cinnamon" is a misprint for 1/4 teaspoon per packed cup of meat. A full teaspoon would swamp the mutton.
- Sweet milkOrdinary whole milk. The term simply distinguished it from soured or buttermilk, which would need soda rather than baking powder. Expect somewhere around 1 to 1 1/4 cups to bring 3 cups of flour to a soft dough, added by feel.
- Baking powderTwo scant teaspoons to 3 cups of flour is light by modern standards, and powders of the period were single-acting, giving their lift on contact with liquid. A level 1 teaspoon per cup of flour is closer to modern practice if you want real rise.
- The chopperA hand-cranked meat grinder. A few pulses in a food processor does the same job, but stop while the meat is still coarse and distinct rather than a paste.
- MuttonTrue mutton, sheep over a year old, is rare in American markets; leftover leg or shoulder of lamb behaves the same way and is milder. Trim hard fat, since cold mutton fat sets waxy in the mouth.
- Moistening the fillingThe recipe offers two tablespoons of gravy-and-catsup per cup of meat as a likely sufficient amount. A wet filling steams the seam open and leaks onto the pan; add it a spoonful at a time until the meat just holds together when pressed.
- SealingEgg white on the edges grips better than water. Press with a fork rather than fingertips, and leave real space between the turnovers so the sides brown instead of steaming.
- YieldThree cups of flour gives roughly ten to twelve four-inch turnovers, needing something like 1 1/2 cups of ground meat at a spoonful apiece. Two per person with a vegetable makes a meal.
The turnover is the household form of the pasty: a way of making a small quantity of cooked meat stretch by wrapping it in cheap flour. The cinnamon-and-onion seasoning points back to an older English tradition of spicing minced meat sweetly, which survives in mincemeat and in Cornish and Scottish savoury pies; the tomato catsup is the American addition, a bottled pantry staple by the late nineteenth century and a quick source of acid and sugar. The closing note, that baked pastry is "more suitable for children" than deep-fried puff paste, is a small piece of period dietetics: rich fried crusts were widely held to be indigestible for young stomachs.