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Mutton, Braised Fillet of, with French Beans
INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 persons. The chump end of a loin of mutton, buttered paper, French beans, a little glaze, 1 pint of gravy. AVERAGE COST, 10d. per lb.
Roll up the mutton in a piece of buttered paper, roast it for 2 hours and do not allow it to acquire the least colour. Have ready some French beans, boiled and drained on a sieve; remove the paper from the mutton, glaze it; just heat up the beans in the gravy, and lay them on the dish with the meat over them. The remainder of the gravy may be strained and sent to table in a tureen.
TIME.-2 hours.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Despite the title, nothing here is braised in the modern sense: the mutton is wrapped and cooked gently until pale, then glazed and set over hot beans. The whole point is the absence of browning, which dictates the oven.
- The hinge: no colourBeeton wants the joint pale, which in a modern oven means keeping the heat low, somewhere in the region of 300-325F, wrapped closed. The book itself gives no temperature. Any hotter and the paper crisps and the fat catches, which defeats the dish.
- Chump end of a loinThe thick rump end of the loin, roughly 2-3 lb bone-in, sold today by butchers as chump or chump chops in one piece. Ask for it tied; supermarket lamb loin is usually already boned and much smaller, and a 2-hour cook would ruin it.
- Mutton versus lambMutton means an older sheep, usually reckoned over two years though the definitions vary: firmer, fattier, far stronger in flavour. Hogget or older lamb is the nearest thing generally available, and it will likely need less time than 2 hours to reach the same tenderness.
- Buttered paperParchment brushed with butter, tied round the joint. Foil does the same job but reflects heat and traps more steam, so the surface stays wetter; parchment is closer to the original result.
- GlazeVictorian glaze is meat stock reduced to a syrup that sets solid when cold, brushed on warm for gloss. Reduce a strong brown stock by three-quarters, or use a spoonful of commercial demi-glace loosened with hot water.
- French beansGreen beans, topped and tailed, boiled until just tender and drained. Warm them through in the gravy only briefly at the end; leave them in it and they go olive-drab and slack.
- A pint of gravyAn imperial pint, 20 fl oz or about 2 1/2 US cups. Rather more than you need for the beans, which is why the surplus goes to table separately.
- Doneness and yieldServes four as written. Take the joint to about 145-150F for pink or 160F if you want it fully cooked through; a 2-3 lb chump at a low oven heat may reach that before the stated 2 hours, so use a thermometer rather than the clock.
The construction here — a pale roast set over vegetables and glossed with reduced stock — belongs to the Anglo-French repertoire in which glace de viande was a standing item in a well-run larder and gave cooks a way to make a modestly priced joint look worked-on. The "10d. per lb" is a reminder of what mutton meant in Britain then: sheep were largely kept for wool and slaughtered when older, so mutton was the everyday meat and young lamb the dearer one, a relationship now reversed. French beans, meaning the common green bean rather than the broad bean that had long dominated English gardens, were a well-established kitchen-garden crop by the nineteenth century. The "seasonable at any time" note attaches to the dish as a whole; what lay behind such year-round claims is not spelt out in the book.