Mutton Stew
2 pounds neck, plate or shoul- 6 onions der of mutton
Salt and pepper
2 pounds potatoes
3 to 4 cups hot water
Cut the mutton into small pieces and arrange in a stew-pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and add the hot water. Cover closely and let the stew simmer for one hour, shaking the pan occasionally. Add the potatoes and onions, peeled and sliced, and cook another hour. Serve very hot. If desired, dumplings may be served with this stew.
A plain water-based stew of the sort meant to feed a family from cheap cuts. The whole method rests on keeping the liquid at a bare simmer, and on the mutton being a cut with enough connective tissue to repay two hours in the pan.
- Keep it below a boilNeck and shoulder need slow, gentle heat to turn gelatinous rather than stringy. A visible tremble in the liquid is right; a rolling boil in a covered pan will toughen the meat and cloud the broth.
- Cuts named"Plate" is the belly section, closer to what a butcher now calls breast; neck may be sold as scrag. Any of the three works, and bone-in pieces will add body to the broth.
- Mutton versus lambMutton means sheep over about two years, strongly flavoured and firm. It is sold now mainly by halal butchers and farm suppliers. Lamb shoulder substitutes directly but is milder and will be tender in closer to 75 minutes than a full hour and then some.
- Six onionsThe recipe gives no size, and six is a great deal of onion by modern measure; scale to the size of the onions you have.
- Potatoes go in whole or thickly cutSliced potatoes over a second full hour will collapse entirely. If you want them intact, cut them into 1½-inch chunks and give them 30 to 40 minutes; if you want them to break down and thicken the broth, follow the recipe as written.
- Water quantityThree to four cups barely covers two pounds of meat in a narrow pan, which is the intention — this is a stew, not a soup. Use a heavy pan with a tight lid so little evaporates, and top up with hot, never cold, water.
- Skim and season lateSkim the grey foam in the first ten minutes. Mutton fat sets hard and pale, so skim again before serving, and taste for salt at the end since the liquid reduces.
- YieldServes four generously, five with dumplings. Dumplings should be dropped on top in the last 20 minutes and the lid left on so they steam.
Butterick's cookbook came out of a pattern-and-magazine publisher selling household competence to middle-class women, and this recipe is a good sample of its economy: three ingredients, no stock, no browning, and cuts that cost a fraction of a chop. Mutton was still ordinary meat in early twentieth-century America and Britain — older sheep were kept for wool and breeding and eaten at the end of their working lives, which is why so many of the recipes for it are long, wet and slow, though roast and boiled joints were staples too. Its near-disappearance from English-speaking kitchens is usually traced to the second half of the century, when faster-finishing breeds and a wartime association with badly cooked institutional mutton pushed the trade toward young lamb. The optional dumplings mark this as a one-pot supper meant to stretch, the same logic as the suet crust or the boiled pudding served alongside meat in a thrifty household.