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Hashed Mutton
Chop an onion and put it into a stewpan with a lump of butter and fry till nicely browned, then mix in a heaped tablespoonful of flour and stir in about one-half pint of clear stock, a tablespoonful of vinegar, salt and pepper to taste, and a small quantity of mixed spices. Stir the sauce over the fire until boiling, then strain it through a gravy strainer and leave until cold. Cut some cold mutton into thin slices, trim off the skin, and most of the fat; put them into a stewpan with a few slices of pickled gherkins, pour in the sauce and heat gradually over a slow fire. When ready turn the hash on to a hot dish, garnish it with sippets of toast or croutons of bread fried a golden brown in butter, and serve with a dish of mashed potatoes.
A leftover dish built on a quick brown onion sauce. Everything depends on keeping the meat off the boil.
- Reheat, do not cookThe mutton is already cooked; it goes into the pan only to warm through in the sauce, about 8-10 minutes at a bare tremble. Let it boil and thin slices of roast leg turn dry and stringy.
- Half a pint of stockIn this American book that is one cup. "Clear stock" means a clarified broth; a brown beef or lamb stock suits the dish. Skim it well.
- Mixed spicesA period blend of allspice, cloves, mace, nutmeg and sometimes cinnamon, sold ready-ground. A pinch total is the intended dose; more will read as dessert.
- MuttonMutton is meat from a sheep over about two years old and is rarely sold in the US. Cold roast leg or shoulder of lamb behaves the same way, though it is milder and needs the vinegar and gherkins less aggressively.
- Straining and cooling the sauceCooling firms any fat on the surface so it can be lifted off; the recipe does not say why it is left to go cold. If you are working straight through, skim it hot instead.
- VesselsA "stewpan" is simply a wide saucepan with a lid. Nothing here needs an oven.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread, fried in butter or toasted and cut to point. Set them around the edge of the dish at the last moment or they soften.
- YieldOne cup of sauce carries about a pound of sliced meat, serving three as a lunch dish with the mashed potatoes.
Hashes of this kind were the standard second life of a roast in nineteenth-century kitchens, where a leg of mutton was expected to appear cold, then hashed, then possibly in a pie. The structure is French in outline -- a brown onion base, flour, stock, and the sharpness of vinegar and gherkin -- and close to what cookbooks of the period called sauce piquante, which was generally recommended for reheated meat precisely because acidity and spice cover the flat, warmed-over taste that cooked mutton develops overnight. Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896 while he was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf, mixes hotel showpieces with this sort of plain household economy, a reminder that the same kitchen that sent out terrapin and canvasback also had to account for yesterday's joint.