Home › The Belgian Kitchen › Ragout of Mutton
Ragout of Mutton
Fry the mutton very well. Then place in another pan sufficient water to cover your mutton, adding pepper, salt, a little nutmeg, a celery, and a few white turnips cut in pieces. When they are well cooked, add the meat and let all simmer for two hours.
A bare-bones stew of the kind collected from Belgian refugee households during the First World War, written for cooks who already knew what a ragout looked like. The quantities are entirely absent, and the sequence needs a second look.
- The hinge: the order is backwards for the vegetablesAs written, the turnips and celery are boiled until "well cooked" and then simmered a further two hours with the meat, by which point they will have dissolved. Give the mutton its two hours in the seasoned water first and add the turnips and celery for the last 30-40 minutes.
- QuantitiesNone are given. For four people, work from about 2 lb of boneless mutton shoulder or neck, 1 lb turnips, one head of celery, and just enough water to cover — roughly 1 to 1.5 pints.
- "A celery"Most likely a whole head rather than a single rib; period recipes commonly called for celery by the head or bunch. Use the outer ribs and the leafy tops, which stand up best to a long braise.
- MuttonSheep over about two years old, stronger and firmer than lamb. Butchers rarely stock it now; hogget or lamb shoulder works, but lamb will be tender in about 90 minutes rather than two hours, so check earlier.
- "Fry the mutton very well"This means a hard brown sear in a little fat, in batches, not cooking it through. The fond left in the pan is the only real depth this stew has — deglaze it with some of the cooking water rather than moving to a clean pan as instructed.
- NutmegA characteristic Belgian and Dutch seasoning for mutton and root vegetables. A few scrapes of a whole nutmeg is enough; pre-ground is markedly weaker and stales fast.
- BodyThe recipe gives no thickening. You can let the liquid reduce, or mash a few of the cooked turnips back into it. A beurre manié whisked in at the end is the quicker route.
- YieldServes four with boiled potatoes or bread. Better on the second day; skim the set fat from the surface before reheating.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in 1915 from recipes contributed by Belgians displaced to Britain after the German invasion. That origin may explain the shape of this entry: it carries no weights, no pan sizes and no yield. Mutton with turnips and celery belongs to everyday Flemish and Walloon home cooking — cheap stewing cuts, long simmering, root vegetables that kept through winter, and the nutmeg that runs through so much Low Countries cookery, a legacy generally traced to the Dutch spice trade. The book is worth reading as a record of what ordinary Belgian households ate before 1914, preserved in exile by people who had lost the kitchens they cooked it in.