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Mutton Cromeskies
Trim off the skin and fat from some cold mutton and mince the lean finely; place one ounce of butter in a stewpan with one tablespoonful of flour, stir over the fire until well mixed, then pour in gradually a good one-half breakfast cupful of nicely flavored stock. Stir it until boiling, then put in the mince with a moderate quantity each of chopped thyme and parsley, salt and pepper to taste, and sprinkle on a little grated nutmeg. Let it heat slowly at the side of the fire, then stir in the beaten yolk of an egg. Cut some slices of mutton fat about two and one-half inches long and two inches wide, place a small bit of the mince on each and roll them up tightly, tying them round with fine twine. In the course of an hour's time dip each of the cromeskies in good frying batter, place them in a stewpan with plenty of boiling fat and fry until lightly browned. Drain the cromeskies as free from fat as possible, pile them on a hot dish over which has been spread a folded napkin, garnish with a border of fried parsley, and serve.
A Victorian way of dressing up yesterday's roast: seasoned mince rolled in a sheet of fat, battered and deep-fried. It works, but two or three details in the original need translating before you start.
- Chill the mince firstThe egg-thickened mince is far easier to handle if it is spread on a plate and left until cold and firm before rolling; otherwise it can squeeze out of the wrappers in the fat. Note that the recipe's "in the course of an hour's time" falls after the rolls are tied, so in the original it is the made-up rolls that stand, not the mince.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is roughly 8-10 fl oz, so "a good one-half breakfast cupful" of stock is about 1/2 cup, perhaps a shade more. The mince should end up thick enough to hold a shape on a spoon, not pourable.
- "At the side of the fire"Low heat, off the hottest part of the range. Once the egg yolk goes in the mixture must not boil or it will curdle and weep.
- The wrapperSheets of mutton fat thin enough to roll are not something a butcher will hand you now. Thinly sliced streaky bacon, blanched briefly to make it pliable, or caul fat if you can order it, does the same job of basting the roll from inside the batter.
- TwineFine cotton kitchen twine, tied loosely enough to cut away easily. Untie and remove every piece before the dish goes to table; cocktail sticks are the modern shortcut and are just as easy to overlook.
- Frying batter and fat temperatureA plain flour-and-water or flour-and-beer batter, about the thickness of heavy cream. Fry at 350-375F in a deep pan; the filling is already cooked, so you are only setting the batter and crisping the wrapper, three to four minutes.
- Nutmeg and herbs"A moderate quantity" is left to the cook; a teaspoon of chopped thyme and a tablespoon of parsley per pound of meat is a reasonable modern reading. Grated nutmeg was a common seasoning in savoury meat dishes of the period and should stay in the background.
- Fried parsleyDry, whole, flat-leaf sprigs dropped into the same hot fat for a few seconds until they stop hissing. Wet parsley will spit violently.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity of meat. As a rough guide, a pound of trimmed cooked mutton would make somewhere around a dozen cromeskies of the size described, enough for four as a first course or a light lunch.
Cromeskies, also spelled kromeskies or kromeskys, entered English cookery from Polish and Russian kitchens in the nineteenth century, the name generally traced to a Polish word for a slice. They belong to the same family as the croquette, and Victorian usage generally distinguishes them by the fact that a cromesky is wrapped in fat or caul before battering while a croquette is merely crumbed. The dish is above all a re-use recipe, one of dozens in the period's books devoted to the cold joint left over from Sunday, and a reminder that even a grand hotel kitchen was judged on how little it wasted. Mutton, then the ordinary meat of British tables, has largely been displaced by lamb, which is why the dish now reads as more exotic than it was.