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Mutton Pies
Make one and one-half pound of paste, divide it into eight pieces, each of which roll out as thin as possible. Partially boil four or five onions, then drain and chop them very fine. Chop a small quantity of mushrooms, and put them, together with the onions and a lump of butter, into a fryingpan and fry until brown. Mince finely a piece of mutton, fry it in butter for a few minutes and add it to the above. Place four of the flats of paste over each other, moistening between them with one spoonful of warmed butter, then put the mince mixture over in small quantities, a short distance from each other. Moisten the paste round the mincemeat with a paste-brush dipped in water, then cover with the remaining pieces of paste; press over each lot of mincemeat with a teacup, and cut round. Butter a bakingtin, lay the pieces on it, baste them with warmed butter, and bake in a moderate oven. When cooked and well colored, arrange on a dish and serve.
Mutton Pilau, Sultana Style Wash one pound of rice, put in a cloth and tie up, leaving room for the rice to swell. Cut one-fourth pound of the best part of mutton in small pieces, put them in a saucepan with one quart of water, and place over the fire until it boils. Then skim the liquor, and move to the side of the fire and simmer for half an hour. Strain the liquor off the meat into a basin, put four ounces of butter in with the meat and fry till nicely browned. Return the liquor to the saucepan, with two tablespoonfuls of skinned pistachios and one tablespoonful of washed currants, add a small quantity of mixed spices. Mince two ounces of mutton and fry it in butter till browned, then add it to the other ingredients. When the liquor boils put in the rice, move to the side of the fire, and simmer until soft. When done, arrange the pilau tastefully on a hot dish, and serve immediately.
Two recipes have been run together in the original setting: a layered mutton pie and a mutton pilau. Both assume mutton, a coal range, and a cook who already knows what "paste" means.
- Paste means pastryOne and a half pounds of paste is the dough only, not a finished weight. Puff or a firm short crust both work; the technique of stacking four sheets with warm butter brushed between is a shortcut lamination, so puff-style dough gives the best result.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 350°F. If you are using a laminated or butter-layered paste, 375-400°F for the first 15 minutes gives better lift, then drop to 350°F to finish.
- MuttonMature mutton is rare in most markets. Lamb shoulder is the usual substitute; it is milder and considerably more tender, so the pilau's half-hour simmer is ample and the minced meat needs only a brief browning.
- Unstated quantities"A piece of mutton" and "a small quantity of mushrooms" are genuinely open. For eight sheets of paste, about 3/4 lb minced meat and 4 oz mushrooms fills the pies without bursting them.
- YieldEight rolled sheets stacked four and four make one double layer of pastry, cut into individual pies with a teacup. Expect six to eight small pies, enough for four as a main course.
- Cutting and sealingPressing with a teacup rim seals and cuts in one motion, but the stacked butter layers will slide apart if the pastry is warm. Chill the assembled sheet for 20 minutes before cutting, and chill again before baking.
- The rice in a clothThe pilau opens by tying the rice in a cloth with room to swell, then never uses the cloth again. The cloth may be a leftover from an older boiled-rice or pudding method, though the book does not say so; in practice simply wash the rice, drain it, and add it to the boiling liquor as the later instruction says.
- Liquid ratioOne quart of water reduced by a half-hour simmer will not reliably cook a full pound of rice. Check partway through and add hot stock or water as needed, or scale the rice back to 12 oz.
- Mixed spicesVictorian "mixed spice" is a sweet blend, generally cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, clove and mace. With the currants and pistachios, half a teaspoon is enough for the whole dish.
Oscar Tschirky, ma u00eetre d'h u00f4tel of the Waldorf and later the Waldorf-Astoria, published his Cook Book in 1896 as a compendium rather than a record of what the hotel actually served nightly, and pages like this one show it: a plain British mutton pie sits directly beside a dish labelled "Sultana Style," a name that would have been read as Turkish or Persian. The pilau's currants, pistachios and sweet spice belong to a long line of Anglo-Ottoman adaptations that entered English cookbooks through the nineteenth century, usually softened for Western palates and freed of any particular regional origin. Mutton itself was the everyday roasting and stewing meat of the period, cheaper and stronger-flavoured than lamb; its near disappearance from American markets in the twentieth century is one of the notable gaps between this book's kitchen and a modern one.