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Rice and Mutton Salad
One-half cupful of rice, two cupfuls of cold minced mutton, mayonnaise dressing, one head of lettuce, whites of three hard boiled eggs. Cook the rice rapidly in boiling salted water about twenty minutes, drain and dry carefully in the oven; mix while hot with the meat which has been moistened with a little of the dressing. Turn into small moulds and set away until chilled. Arrange nests of lettuce leaves on a salad dish, turn each mould into one. Garnish with the whites of eggs cut in rings, and just before serving fill the centers with mayonnaise dressing, the remainder being served in a separate dish.
A leftovers dish dressed up as a composed salad: cold roast mutton and rice bound with mayonnaise, chilled in individual moulds. The technique is sound, but two steps need translating.
- Dry the rice, don't just drain itSpread it out and leave it in a low oven for a few minutes until the grains are separate and dry to the touch. The recipe gives no temperature, so keep the heat gentle and watch it. Wet rice will not hold a mould shape and turns the mayonnaise loose and soupy. This is the step the dish hinges on.
- Twenty minutes of rapid boilingThat timing suits rice cooked loose in plenty of salted water, pasta-style, as the recipe directs. Start checking at 12-14 minutes with modern long-grain; drain the moment the grains are tender but still distinct. Overcooked rice will not unmould cleanly.
- Mix while hotWarm rice absorbs the dressing and the meat juices; cold rice does not. Combine immediately after drying, then pack into the moulds and chill.
- MuttonMutton means mature sheep: usually reckoned as over a year old, though in Britain the term is generally kept for older animals, with hogget in between. It is hard to buy outside halal and specialty butchers. Cold roast leg of lamb is the nearest substitute, though milder; trim the fat well, since mutton and lamb fat congeals unpleasantly when cold.
- MouldsSmall moulds means teacups, custard cups, or dariole moulds of about half a cup each. Rinse them in cold water or wipe with a film of oil before packing so the salad releases in one piece.
- MayonnaiseA period cookbook assumes mayonnaise made at home from raw yolks. If you make your own, use pasteurised eggs; jarred mayonnaise works and holds better in a dish that sits on the table.
- Serving and holdingTwo cupfuls of meat with half a cup of raw rice makes a fair quantity of mixture; how many portions depends on the size of your moulds. It is a mayonnaise-bound meat salad, so keep it refrigerated until service and do not leave it out more than an hour or two.
- The egg garnishCut the hard-boiled whites crosswise into rings from the widest part of the egg. The recipe says nothing about the leftover yolks; they are worth sieving over the top or working into the dressing rather than throwing out.
Salads like this one belong to a household economy in which a large joint was roasted at the start of the week and reappeared, cold, for several days after. Mutton was the ordinary sheep meat of British and American tables into the early twentieth century, stronger and fattier than the young lamb that has since replaced it almost entirely. The moulding, the nests of lettuce, and the ring of egg white are the era's characteristic move: an economical remnant given the architecture of a formal course. Recipes of the period are full of meat and rice mixtures pressed into small shapes and turned out at the table.