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Mutton Collops
Take some slices of roast or boiled leg of mutton, egg them, and roll in a mixture of breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, and a little flower. Fry till the slices are brown on each side; serve with chipped potatoes. Shoulder of Mutton Dressed Like Kid My readers have probably tasted a shoulder of kid dressed as mutton. Let them therefore try the converse of the dish, and, if they really take trouble with it, they will have a dinner of the most delicious. Put into a deep dish that will hold your shoulder of mutton the following mixture: A cupful each of oil, vinegar, white wine, red wine, an onion stuffed with cloves, a bunch of herbs which must be fresh ones--thyme, parsley, marjoram, sage, a tiny bit of mint, a few bay-leaves--two medium carrots cut in slices. Put the shoulder of mutton in this mixture and keep it there for four days, turning it every now and then and pouring the mixture on it. On the fifth day take it out, and, if you care to take the trouble, you will improve it by larding the meat here and there. Put it to roast in front of a good fire, with your liquor, which serves to baste it with, in a pan beneath. If you cannot arrange to hang the mutton by a string to turn like a roasting jack, then bake it, and continually baste it. A small shoulder is most successful. For one of four pounds bake for fifty minutes.
Roast Rump of Beef, Bordelaise Sauce Take three pounds of the rump of beef, put it into a pretty deep pan upon one onion, one sliced carrot, some thyme, and a bay-leaf, three table-spoonfuls of dripping, salt, and pepper. Put it on the top of the fire, and when it comes fully to the boil, put it to the side, and allow it to simmer nicely for an hour and a half. Dress it on a dish and serve the sauce separately.
Three linked dishes from the meat chapter: a fry-up of leftover roast mutton, a long-marinated shoulder, and a stovetop rump of beef. The instructions assume an open fire and a cook who already knows the shapes of these dishes.
- CollopsA collop is a slice or small cutlet of meat; the Swedish kalops is usually taken to be a borrowing of the English word. Here it means cold leftover leg, sliced thin enough to heat through in the pan without drying — the recipe gives no thickness.
- "A little flower""Flower" was a common older spelling of flour. Mix it into the crumbs with the salt and pepper, or dredge the slices in flour first, then egg, then crumbs, which gives a better-adhering crust.
- Chipped potatoesBritish usage for fried potatoes cut in batons, not crisps. Fry them at the same time in the same fat and both dishes come to the table hot.
- Kid and muttonThe joke turns on a reverse swap: the author assumes readers have eaten kid dressed as mutton and offers the converse. There is no kid in the dish; the marinade of wine, vinegar, oil and strong herbs is what is meant to give mutton the character of young goat.
- The marinade, and where to keep itFour cups of liquid in all — a cup each of oil, vinegar, white wine and red wine — will not cover a shoulder, hence the instruction to turn and baste it. Four days in a cool 1915 larder means four days refrigerated now; use a non-reactive dish, as the vinegar and wine will pit aluminium or bare cast iron.
- LardingThreading strips of pork back fat through lean meat with a larding needle. Modern lamb and mutton shoulder is fatty enough that this is genuinely optional; barding the top with a sheet of fat does much the same work.
- Roasting the shoulderSpit-roasting before a fire becomes oven roasting; the book gives no temperature, but a hot oven of roughly 425F suits the fifty minutes specified. Fifty minutes for a four-pound shoulder will leave the meat pink at the centre; check for 145-150F at the thickest point rather than trusting the clock, and rest it fifteen minutes.
- The rump of beef"On the top of the fire" means over direct high heat until the pan boils, then moved aside to barely tremble. There is no added liquid beyond three tablespoons of dripping, so this is a pot-roast in the meat's own juices — use a heavy lidded pan and check every twenty minutes that it has not caught.
- The missing sauceThe recipe names Bordelaise but never makes it; the "sauce" served separately is the strained pan liquor. A proper bordelaise is red wine reduced with shallot and thyme, finished with meat glaze and poached marrow, and would need to be made alongside.
- YieldThree pounds of rump or a four-pound shoulder serves four to six. The collops depend entirely on how much roast mutton is left over.
Belgian cooking of this period sat between French technique and British habit, and this page shows both pulling at once: collops and chipped potatoes are Anglo-Scots kitchen language, while the four-day wine marinade and the Bordelaise name come straight from the French repertoire. The Belgian Cook Book was compiled in Britain during the First World War, when very large numbers of Belgian refugees were living in British households and their recipes were gathered as a record of a cuisine under occupation. Marinating heavily in wine, vinegar and green herbs was a familiar way to soften and perfume mature sheep, which in 1915 was still an everyday meat rather than the rarity it has become. The instruction to hang the joint on a string before the fire, with a jack to turn it, already looked old-fashioned in print, by which date most kitchens were roasting in a range or gas oven.