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Saddle of Mutton in Surprise
Scoop out the meat from a cold saddle of mutton, cutting it close to the bone and leaving an outside thickness of about one and one-half inches wide. Mince the meat fine with a little of the fat and mix with it two tablespoonfuls of chopped onions fried in a little butter, sprinkle over one tablespoonful of flour and one saltspoonful each of salt and pepper, add one bay leaf and a little cayenne. Pour a breakfast cupful of broth into a saucepan, stir in the meat mixture, cook gently for ten minutes and add the well-beaten yolks of two eggs. Work two pounds of boiled potatoes into a stiff paste in a basin, roll out and form into an edging round the saddle of mutton, filling the cavity scooped out of the joint with the meat mixture. Brush all over with egg, cover with breadcrumbs and brown in a quick oven on a baking sheet for a few minutes. Take it out, and serve on a dish with Spanish sauce poured round.
A made-over dish built on yesterday's roast: the saddle is hollowed out, the meat rebuilt as a seasoned hash, and the whole thing returned to the oven behind a wall of potato. Two things decide whether it works — the potato paste has to be stiff enough to stand, and the egg yolks must not be allowed to boil.
- The hinge: the yolksAdd the beaten yolks off the heat, or over the barest heat, and stir them in. If the mixture simmers after they go in it will curdle into grains and the filling loses the glossy body that holds it in the cavity.
- Saddle of muttonThe saddle is the whole unsplit loin, both sides of the backbone. Mutton — sheep over two years — is a special order from a butcher; a saddle of lamb of about 5 to 7 lb is the usual substitute and is milder. Either way this is a second-day recipe and assumes the joint is already roasted and cold.
- SaltspoonfulA quarter teaspoon. A breakfast cupful is a large cup, roughly 8 to 10 fl oz; use 8 oz of broth and add more only if the mince tightens up too much.
- Quick oven425–450F. The joint is already cooked, so the oven is only setting the crumb crust and colouring the potato; five to ten minutes is enough, and a moment under the broiler finishes it if the top is pale.
- The potato edgingTwo pounds of boiled potatoes should be dry and floury — russets or a similar baking potato, drained and steamed off in the hot pan before mashing. Waterlogged potato will not roll or hold a wall, and too much butter or milk beaten in will make it slump in the oven.
- Spanish sauceSauce espagnole: the brown mother sauce of brown roux, brown stock and mirepoix, usually with tomato. A well-reduced brown gravy from the original roast serves the same purpose.
- Bay leafFish it out before the mixture goes back into the joint. The recipe never says to, but nobody wants it in a serving.
- YieldA lamb saddle treated this way serves six to eight, carved in slices down the loin with a spoonful of the filling and a piece of the potato border alongside.
Oscar Tschirky's book belongs to the era when a great hotel kitchen and a careful private household faced the same problem from opposite ends: what to do with a large cold roast. "In surprise" — en surprise — is a term that recurs in nineteenth-century French cookery for dishes that conceal something unexpected, often a dish rebuilt inside its own original shell or shape, so that what arrives at table looks like the whole joint and turns out to be something else; the related omelette surprise is the name under which baked Alaska circulated. The technique here, hollowing a cooked saddle and refilling it with a bound mince behind a piped or moulded potato border, can be read as a refinement of the ordinary English rechauffé, and the potato wall does the work that a pastry crust would do in a pie: it holds the filling and browns handsomely. That the finishing sauce is simply called Spanish, with no recipe attached, tells you what the book assumed of its readers — espagnole was taken to need no explanation.