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Stew, Irish (INGREDIENTS for dish) (II)
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-3 lb. of the breast of mutton, 1½ pint of water, salt and pepper to taste, Cut up the meat small, add the water, and let it simmer for 24 hours. Now add the vegetables, cut in thin, small slices; season, STILTON CHEESE.
STOCK, MEDIUM. and boil for 1½ hour. Thicken with the oat- good lean ham; any poultry trimmings; 2 meal, and serve.
TIME.-2 hours.
SEASONABLE in winter.
Note. If rice is used instead of oatmeal, put oz. of butter; 3 onions, 3 carrots, 2 turnips (the latter should be omitted in summer, lest they ferment), 1 head of celery, a few chopped mushrooms, when obtainable; tomato, a bunch of savoury herbs, not forgetting parsley; 1 oz. of salt, 3 lumps of sugar, 12 white pepper corns, 6 cloves, 3 small blades of mace, 4 quarts of water.
AVERAGE COST, 58. it in with the vegetables.
An oatmeal-thickened Irish stew built on breast of mutton, one of the cheapest cuts in a Victorian butcher's shop. The printed timings do not agree with one another, so cook by the state of the meat rather than the clock.
- The timings conflictThe body of the recipe asks for a long first simmer, then an hour with the vegetables, while the TIME line gives 2 hours in total. Take 2 hours as the intent: roughly an hour of gentle simmering on the meat alone, then the vegetables for the rest.
- Breast of muttonA fatty, bony cut sold cheap in Victorian butchers' shops and hard to find now. Lamb neck, shoulder or shanks give the same gelatinous result; 3 lb bone-in will yield perhaps 2 lb of meat. Skim the fat off the surface before thickening or the stew will be greasy.
- Water quantity1½ pints is about 30 fl oz, getting on for 4 cups, which is a close-covered braise rather than a soup. Keep the lid on and the heat at a bare tremble, or you will need to top it up.
- The vegetablesThe list has dropped out. An Irish stew of this period means potatoes and onions above all, with carrot and sometimes turnip; cut them in thin slices as directed so they partly break down and body the liquid.
- Thickening with oatmealUse fine or medium oatmeal, not rolled oats, and no more than a rounded tablespoon or two. Sprinkle it in while stirring and give it ten minutes to swell, otherwise it tastes raw and settles in lumps.
- The rice variationIf you follow the note and use rice instead, add it with the vegetables so it has the full hour; short-grain rice thickens best. Expect a noticeably starchier, denser stew.
- SeasoningSalt and pepper are the only seasonings given, and a stew of this length needs salting in stages. Taste again after thickening, since the oatmeal flattens the seasoning.
- YieldStated as 6 servings, which is realistic with potatoes and bread alongside.
Irish stew reached English cookery books in the nineteenth century as a byword for thrift: a cheap fatty cut of mutton, potatoes, onions and water, cooked slowly in one covered pot with no browning and no stock. Mrs Beeton's household audience knew breast and neck of mutton as the cuts that made a meal for a family on a few pence, and the oatmeal here does the work that a roux or a flour-and-butter thickening would do in a grander kitchen; in Scottish and Irish practice, oatmeal is long established as an everyday thickener, long before it was a health food. The rice alternative in the note reflects the same logic, rice having become cheap and widely stocked in British groceries by the late Victorian period.