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Minced Mutton Patties
Line some buttered patty pans with thin paste, fill them up with flour or rice, place in a moderate oven and bake. Take out when done, remove the flour or rice, turn them out of the pans and fill with minced cooked lean mutton; moisten with a little gravy, warm them up in the oven, and when hot place a napkin on a dish, lay them on it, and serve with a garnish of parsley.
A blind-baked tartlet shell filled with reheated mince — a use-up dish for the tail end of a roast leg or saddle. Two details carry it: the shells must be baked dry and crisp, and the mince must be moist enough not to taste like sawdust.
- Patty pans and pastePatty pans are small shallow tartlet tins, roughly 2 to 3 inches across; a 12-cup tartlet or shallow muffin tin works. "Thin paste" is a plain short pastry rolled to about 1/8 inch.
- Moderate ovenRead this as about 350 to 375F. Blind-bake 15 to 20 minutes, until the pastry is set and pale gold; the second warming-through with the filling takes 5 to 8 minutes at the same heat.
- Flour or rice as weightsThis is baking beans by another name, and the flour or rice does the same job as ceramic weights. Line each shell with a scrap of parchment first, or the filler works into the pastry and you will be picking it out.
- Save the fillerRice and flour used this way are only dried out, not spoiled. Cool and store them; the rice can be reused as weights many times, though it will no longer cook up well for eating, and both should be discarded once they scorch or smell stale.
- The minceLean cooked mutton, chopped fine by hand or pulsed briefly — a food processor turns it to paste in seconds. Season firmly with salt, pepper and a little grated onion; cold roast mutton is bland on its own.
- Gravy, and how much"A little gravy" means enough to bind, not to pool — about 2 tablespoons per cup of mince. Too wet and it soaks the shell from below. Leftover roasting-pan gravy is ideal; stock thickened with a spoonful of roux does the same.
- MuttonTrue mutton, from mature sheep generally over a year old, is uncommon in American markets. Leftover leg of lamb is the practical substitute; it is milder, so lean harder on the pepper.
- Yield and servingA cup of mince fills about eight small shells, enough for four as a first course or a light lunch. The napkin under them is period plating — it absorbs any grease and keeps the shells from sliding — and can be skipped.
Minced meat in a pastry case was one of the standing answers to the question of what to do with a large joint in a house that served large joints daily, and Oscar's book records a number of variations on the theme. Mutton was still ordinary American eating in 1896, when this collection appeared; the modern preference for young lamb had not yet pushed it off the menu, and the older, stronger meat took well to being seasoned and moistened rather than served plain in slices. The technique described here fry flour or rice used to fill an unbaked shell so it holds its shape in the oven fpredates purpose-made baking weights and is common in nineteenth-century pastry instruction. The napkin folded on the serving dish was standard period plating for dishes of this kind, applied here to what was, at heart, yesterday's roast.