Cayenne (Cup of cream cup wine Mash)

The page has come through the scanner badly mangled — the ingredient list and the method have been shuffled together and at least one line is missing. What survives is a standard chafing-dish reheat: cooked mutton warmed in a seasoned cream sauce, sharpened with wine and served on toast. Read it as a template rather than a set of instructions.

• What is missingThere is no quantity for the mutton, no number of egg yolks, and the two tablespoons of butter have floated to the end with no place to go. Assume the butter starts the pan, the yolks are hard-cooked and mashed to thicken, and the meat is whatever cold roast you have — roughly a pound to a cup of cream.
• The yolks are the thickenerMashed hard-cooked yolks blended with butter and mustard appear as a thickener in devilled and chafing-dish dishes of this sort, in place of a flour roux. They give a slightly grainy, rich sauce. Work them smooth with the butter and seasoning before any liquid goes in, or they stay lumpy.
• Do not boil after the wineThis is the hinge. Cream held at a simmer with acid wine in it will curdle, and reheated mutton toughens fast. Bring the cream and meat just to steaming, add the wine off direct heat, and serve.
• The wineA quarter cup, unspecified. In savoury dishes of this kind a fortified wine, usually sherry or madeira, is the likeliest reading rather than a table red; dry sherry is the safe choice.
• MuttonMutton is older sheep, generally reckoned over a year or two — stronger, fattier, and essentially unavailable in American supermarkets. Cold roast leg of lamb is the practical substitute; trim the fat hard, since it sets solid the moment the sauce cools.
• The chafing dishA reheat of this kind was often done in a chafing dish, whose blazer set over a hot-water pan gives gentle, indirect heat, though nothing on the surviving page says so. A heavy saucepan over the lowest burner setting behaves much the same way. Anything hotter will split the cream.
• CayenneRecipes of this sort commonly call for no more than "a few grains" of cayenne, so keep it well under an eighth teaspoon and add it with the mustard so it disperses.
• YieldA cup of cream will sauce roughly a pound of meat, which would serve three or four on toast as a supper or luncheon dish, though the original gives no quantity to go on. Cut the toast into points and lay the meat over, rather than spooning sauce onto whole slices, which go soggy.