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Shoulder of Mutton
Put a handful of dried white haricots to soak over-night and simmer them the following day for two hours with some salt. Rub your shoulder of mutton with a little bit of garlic before putting it in the oven to cook, and when it is done, serve with the haricots round it, to which have been added a pat or two of butter.
A two-part dish written in the shorthand of a cook who assumed you already knew how to roast a joint. The beans and the meat are cooked separately and married only on the platter.
- HaricotsDried white haricot beans — navy, cannellini or the flatter Belgian/Dutch types all work. "A handful" is genuinely vague; reckon on about 1 cup (7 oz) dried, which swells to roughly 3 cups cooked and serves four alongside the meat.
- Salt in the potThe original salts the beans from the start of the simmer, contrary to a long-lived kitchen superstition. Salted soaking and cooking water in fact gives better-seasoned beans with intact skins; follow the instruction as written.
- Two hours is a maximum, not a ruleBeans bought within the last year will be tender in 60–90 minutes. Old beans can take the full two hours or refuse to soften at all. Start tasting at the hour mark.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is older sheep, usually reckoned at over two years (with "hogget" for one to two), and is stronger-flavoured and tougher; it is now much harder to find than lamb outside specialist and halal butchers. A bone-in lamb shoulder of 4–5 lb is the usual substitute and will cook faster than true mutton.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Shoulder is a fatty, well-worked cut that rewards slow roasting: 325°F for a lamb shoulder, allowing about 30 minutes per pound, or considerably longer at 300°F if you want it falling apart. Mutton wants the lower end and more time.
- The garlic rubRubbing a cut clove over the fat is a light touch by modern standards. For more, slit the fat and insert slivers of garlic — the method is period-appropriate and suits the strong meat.
- Finishing the beansButter stirred in off the heat is the whole of the sauce. Drain the beans but keep a little of their liquor to loosen them, and add pan juices from the roast if you have them.
- ServingA 4–5 lb shoulder with this quantity of beans feeds four to six. Rest the meat 15–20 minutes before carving.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in England in 1915 from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had fled the German invasion, and sold in aid of relief work; that origin explains the plainness here, since these were dishes recalled from memory by displaced households rather than copied from a chef's manual. Roast mutton or lamb with white haricots is a fixture of northern French and Belgian cooking, and the pairing survives in the French kitchen as haricots à la bretonne. The economy of the thing is worth noticing: a cheap fatty shoulder rather than a leg, a handful of dried beans soaked overnight, and butter as the only enrichment — wartime writing, even where the dish itself is much older.