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Removes or Releves: Bretonne
A fore-quarter of Southdown mutton is called Quartier de pré-salé. Served with haricot beans, it is à la Bretonne.
A Saddle of mutton as- Selle de mouton à l'Anglaise or en broche is roasted. au laver served with laver and a brown sauce. rôtie à la venaison-it is hung a fortnight, roasted, and served in a rich brown sauce with wine. à la Mirabeau-roasted, and served in Poivrade sauce with chopped gherkins and beetroot. à la Polonaise. The meat of a roast saddle is cut out, minced, and put back again with brown sauce, etc., keeping the shape by a wall of mashed potatoes; it is sprinkled with breadcrumbs, and browned. Dressed in this way, with a purée of onions over the mince, and served with Soubise sauce, it is called à la Marseillaise.
A Leg of mutton as- Gigot rôti is roasted; à la Portugaise, it is served with Spanish onions. à la Russe-roasted, and the cooking finished in burning brandy; served with the gravy and brandy. à la Provençale-garlic inserted into the leg; roasted and served with Bretonne sauce. en chevreuil-larded, soaked in oil and roasted; served with Poivrade sauce.
Gigot à la Flamande-boiled, and served with carrots and mashed turnips. It is also served with caper sauce-sauce aux câpres. à la Royale is larded and braised; à la Jardinière - with a Jardinière garnish; à la Napolitaine with macaroni and Neapolitan sauce; à la Soubise-with Soubise sauce and potato croquettes. de sept heures is boned, and stewed for seven hours with vegetables. farci is boned, stuffed and roasted; served with tomato or Soubise sauce. à la Bretonne is stuffed and braised, and served with Bretonne sauce and haricot beans. à la Polonaise is braised, cut in slices without severing them from the bone, and a stuffing put between each slice.
A Neck of mutton as- Carré de mouton is roasted; bouilli-boiled; aux câpres served with caper sauce; à la Nivernaise-with carrots and mashed turnips, and caper sauce in a sauce-boat. au riz-cooked with rice, slices of onion and dice of ham. à l'Irlandaise is braised and served with onions and potato croquettes. à la Dustan is served with a purée of haricot beans; à la Jardinière - with a Jardinière garnish; or with any dressed vegetable or purée, naming it accordingly. à la Provençale-spread with a purée of onions. breadcrumbed and browned; served in a highly seasoned brown sauce.
A remove, or relevé, is the large joint brought in after the fish to take its place on the table. This page is the mutton of that course, sorted by joint: forequarter, saddle, leg, neck.
- Pré-salé is a pasture, not a breedQuartier de pré-salé means a forequarter from sheep grazed on salt marsh, and the flavour claim behind it is real. The book pairs the phrase with Southdown, which is the breed, so the two words together describe both the animal and the ground it fed on. Pré-salé lamb is still sold in France under that name.
- Seven hours, bonedGigot de sept heures is a leg boned and stewed for seven hours with vegetables until it can be served with a spoon. It is the only entry on the page with a number in it, and the number is the recipe. The dish survives in France under the same name.
- En chevreuil means made to taste of gameLarded, soaked in oil or marinade, roasted, and sauced with Poivrade, a peppery vinegar sauce. Three entries here do some version of it. Mutton dressed as venison was a standing trick of the period, and the marinade is doing the work that long hanging would otherwise have done.
- A saddle is both loinsSelle de mouton is the whole back, bone in, both loins together, carved in long slices down the length. A butcher will cut one to order, and it is a different object from two racks: it feeds a table from a single piece and it carves lengthwise rather than into chops.
- À la Polonaise is a shepherd’s pie in disguiseThe meat is cut out of a roast saddle, minced, put back between the bones with brown sauce, walled in with mashed potato to hold the shape, crumbed and browned. It is Monday’s dinner served in Sunday’s outline, and the book gives it a French name and a sauce.
- LaverAu laver is served with laver, the boiled seaweed still eaten in South Wales as laverbread. With mutton it is a Welsh pairing, and the result is dark and iron-tasting rather than sharp, which is why it needs the brown sauce beside it.
The Remove is the most revealing course in this dinner, because it is the one that was carved in front of people. The joint came in whole, the host or a servant took it apart while the table watched, and the shape of the cut was part of the display. That is why this page is organised by joint rather than by sauce, and it is also why the re-dressed entries exist: a saddle carved in public on Sunday goes back downstairs half-eaten, and the book has names waiting for the remainder. Underneath all of it is a quantity of labour that the page never mentions and never needed to. A leg stewed seven hours, a saddle hung a fortnight and trimmed, a neck braised, a mince rebuilt inside its own bones and piped round with potato. The recipes are short because the time of the person doing the work was not what the household was economising on.