Cook a Breast of
INGREDIENTS for dish for 5 persons. -Breast of mutton, 2 onions, salt and pepper to taste, flour, a bunch of savoury herbs, green peas. AVERAGE COST, 7d. per lb.
Cut the mutton into pieces about 2 inches square, and let it be tolerably lean ; put it into a stewpan with a little fat or butter, and fry it of a nice brown; then dredge in a little flour, slice the onions and put it with the herbs in the stewpan; pour in sufficient water just to cover the meat, and simmer the whole gently until the mutton is tender. Take out the meat, strain and skim off all the fat from the gravy, and put both the meat and gravy back into the stewpan; add about a quart of young green peas, and let them boil gently until done. 2 or 3 slices of bacon added and stewed with the mutton giv additional flavour; and to insure the peas being a beautiful green colour they may be boiled in water separately, and added to the stew at the moment of serving.
TIME.-2½ hours.
SEASONABLE from June to August.
MUTTON, BROILED.
Mutton, Broiled, and Tomato Sauce. (Cold Meat Cookery.)-INGREDIENTS. A few slices of cold mutton, tomato sauce.
Cut some nice slices from a cold leg or shoulder of mutton; season them with pepper and salt, and broil over a clear fire.
Make some tomato sauce, pour it over the mutton and serve. This makes an excellent dish, and must be served very hot.
TIME. About 5 minutes to broil the mutton.
SEASONABLE in September and October, when tomatoes are plentiful and seasonable. 254 MUTTON, CARVING OF.
A plain brown stew of breast of mutton finished with green peas — a June-to-August dish built around the first shelled peas of the season. The whole thing works on one point: the breast is a fatty cut and the gravy must be degreased before the peas go in.
- The cutBreast of mutton is the belly-side rib section, laced with fat and cartilage. Ask a butcher for breast or flank of lamb if mutton is unavailable; boneless lamb shoulder also stews well. Trim hard fat before cutting into 2-inch pieces.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is meat from an adult sheep — usually over a year old, often two or more — stronger in flavour, tougher, and slower to soften. Modern lamb reaches tenderness in noticeably less time, so test with a fork rather than trusting the clock.
- Cooking timeThe stated time is unreliable as printed. A breast of true mutton wants roughly 2 to 2½ hours at a bare simmer; lamb, closer to 1½. It is done when the meat pulls apart under light pressure.
- Skim, then peasStraining and skimming the gravy is not optional refinement. Breast renders a great deal of fat, and peas cooked in it turn greasy and dull. Chill the liquid briefly if you want the fat to lift off cleanly.
- A quart of peasThe recipe does not say whether the quart is measured shelled or in the pod. Taken as shelled, that is roughly 10 to 12 oz of peas; measured in the pod it yields appreciably less. Frozen peas substitute; add them in the last three or four minutes only.
- Keeping them greenThe suggestion to boil the peas separately and add them at the moment of serving is the better method; peas held in hot gravy lose their colour and go khaki.
- HerbsA "bunch of savoury herbs" in books of this period usually meant parsley and thyme, often with a bay leaf, tied with string. Tie it so it can be lifted out with the meat.
- YieldAs written, five servings. Serve with boiled potatoes or bread to take up the gravy; there is no thickening beyond the dredged flour, so expect a thin, glossy sauce rather than a heavy one.
Breast of mutton was one of the cheapest cuts on a Victorian butcher's block, and the page notes seven pence a pound for it. Recipes like this one exist because a household cook was expected to make the awkward cuts palatable: long simmering breaks down the connective tissue that makes breast unpleasant when roasted, and the fat it throws off is skimmed away rather than eaten. The pairing with green peas is seasonal rather than arbitrary — before freezing, shelled peas were available only for a few weeks from June, and the same window closed the mutton-and-peas dishes that fill the summer pages of nineteenth-century English cookery books. The anxiety about colour is period-typical too: some cooks of the era reached for copper pans or a pinch of soda to keep peas bright, and Mrs Beeton's suggestion of separate boiling is the sounder answer.