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Fricasseed Mutton
Cut two pounds of the breast of mutton into large squares, sprinkle over with flour and salt, put them into a fryingpan, with a little fat or butter, and fry until brown. Place them in a saucepan, add an onion cut in slices, cover with water, and cook slowly until the bones can be removed easily. Strain the liquor and skim off the fat, put it back in the saucepan, and when it boils, put in the boned meat, and season with salt and pepper to taste, add one pint of green peas, cook slowly for fifteen minutes or long enough to cook the peas, turn on a dish, and serve. Macaroni cut in half-inch pieces, or the tops of asparagus may be used instead of the peas.
A plain braise dressed up under a French name, and the sort of dish a hotel kitchen used to move cheap cuts. Two things decide whether it is good: how patiently the meat cooks, and how thoroughly the fat is skimmed.
- The cutBreast of mutton is a fatty, bony, layered cut from the belly side of the ribs. Mutton (sheep over about two years) is rare in American markets; lamb breast is the direct substitute, and boneless lamb shoulder cut in 2-inch pieces works if breast is unavailable. Two pounds of bone-in breast yields roughly a pound of meat once boned.
- Skim seriouslyThis is the hinge. Lamb breast renders a great deal of fat, and the recipe's instruction to strain and skim is not optional politeness — an unskimmed broth will set to grease as it cools on the plate. Chilling the strained liquor lets the fat firm up and be lifted off, though it may need considerably longer than twenty minutes to come away in a sheet.
- "Cook slowly until the bones can be removed easily"That is about 1½ to 2 hours at a bare simmer, barely bubbling. A hard boil will toughen the meat before the connective tissue gives way.
- The peasA pint of green peas here means fresh peas in the pod era; a pint shelled is roughly 10 oz, near a standard 10-ounce box of frozen peas. Fifteen minutes suits mature late-season peas. Frozen peas need three to four minutes and will go grey and mealy at fifteen — add them at the end and just heat through.
- Body of the sauceThe flour dredge before frying is the only thickener, so the finished liquor stays thin, closer to a broth than a gravy. If you want it to coat, reduce the strained liquor by a third before returning the meat, or whisk in a small beurre manié.
- The macaroni variationBoil the macaroni separately to just short of done and add it for the last few minutes. Cooked from raw in the lamb liquor it will absorb the broth and leave the dish dry and starchy.
- YieldServes three, or four at a table with bread and another dish. Mashed or boiled potatoes are the natural partner.
A fricassee, in classical French usage, is generally described as meat cut up, cooked in fat, then finished in liquid — though period usage was looser than any tidy contrast with sautés and stews suggests. Cooks of the period split them into white fricassees, where the meat is stiffened in butter without colour and the sauce enriched with cream and egg yolk, and brown ones like this, where the flour and fat are allowed to take colour first. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel, gathered in his book the working repertoire of the hotel's kitchens in New York around the turn of the twentieth century, and its interest lies partly in how much of it is unglamorous: a large hotel kitchen had to find dignified uses for breast, neck and shoulder, not just saddle and rack. Mutton was still ordinary eating in America then, and lamb later displaced it — younger animals, faster to market, milder on the plate.