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Stewed Mutton
Remove the bone from a leg of mutton, cut the meat in large squares, put them in a basin, sprinkle with salt and pepper, add a bunch of sweet herbs, pour in one wineglassful of vinegar, and let them remain for a few hours to soak. Take out, drain, put them into a stockpot with ten ounces of fat bacon chopped small and melted, cook slowly for twenty minutes, pour over the marinade liquor, add two bay leaves, and a few cloves of garlic. Let it cook for five minutes longer, then draw the pot to the side of the fire, cover it with a piece of paper, lay a plate on top, and stew slowly until the meat is done. When ready take out the meat, place on a dish, skim off the fat from the liquor, add two or three tablespoonfuls of tomato sauce, boil it up once, pour it through a fine sieve over the meat, and serve it with a dish of rice. Stewed Mutton, Farmer's Style Put into a saucepan three pounds of breast or shoulder of mutton cut in small squares, with one ounce of butter, and six small onions. Cook for ten minutes or till of a good golden color. Add three tablespoonfuls of flour, mix well together, and moisten with three pints of light broth or water, stirring continually while boiling. Season with one tablespoonful of salt, one teaspoonful of pepper, and one-half teaspoonful of nutmeg, adding two carrots and two turnips cut into small pieces, a bunch of sweet herbs and one crushed clove of garlic. Boil over a moderate fire for thirty minutes; put in one-half pint of Lima or white beans, and let the whole cook again for fifteen minutes. Skim off the fat well, remove the parsley, and serve. Mutton Stew, Turkish Cut some leg of mutton into small pieces, wash, put in a saucepan with sufficient water to cover, season with salt and pepper, and boil till tender. Scald one breakfast cupful of chick peas, put them in with the meat, skimming the liquor, and boil until tender. Slice three onions, fry them until brown, then add them to the stew. Place some slices of toast in the bottom of a hot dish, pour the stew over, and serve.
Three stews in one entry, all built on mature mutton — a meat that no longer sits in most butchers' cases. The conversions below matter less than the cooking times, which the original leaves largely to the cook's judgment.
- Mutton, and what to use insteadMutton is sheep over a year old: darker, firmer, considerably stronger in flavor than lamb. Lamb shoulder or leg works in all three recipes, but it will be tender sooner and taste milder. If you find true mutton, expect it to want an extra hour.
- A wineglassfulIn this period a wineglass is about 2 fluid ounces, or 1/4 cup. That is a modest amount of vinegar for a whole boned leg — it is a flavoring marinade, not a pickle.
- "Draw the pot to the side of the fire"This is the hinge of the first recipe. On a coal range the side of the firebox gave a bare, trembling simmer; the paper cartouche and the plate on top held in moisture. Reproduce it at the lowest burner setting with the lid ajar, or in a 300F oven, and count on 2 to 2 1/2 hours for lamb shoulder.
- Ten ounces of fat baconThat is well over half a pound of chopped fat bacon rendered down for one leg of meat, far more than modern taste expects; the recipe itself has you skim the fat off later. Four ounces of diced salt pork or unsmoked bacon gives the same body without a slick of grease to skim.
- A bunch of sweet herbsConventionally a bouquet garni: parsley stems, thyme, a bay leaf, tied so it can be lifted out whole. That would account for the otherwise puzzling instruction to "remove the parsley" in the farmer's-style stew, where no parsley is listed separately.
- Salt in the farmer's styleOne tablespoon of salt and a full teaspoon of pepper for three pounds of meat and three pints of liquid is heavy by current standards, especially if you use commercial broth. Start with a teaspoon and correct at the end.
- The farmer's-style timing is shortThirty minutes plus fifteen will not tenderize breast or shoulder. Simmer 1 1/2 to 2 hours before the vegetables go in, and add the carrots and turnips for the last 30 minutes so they do not collapse.
- Beans and chick peasHalf a pint of Lima or white beans, and one breakfast cupful of chick peas — a breakfast cup being larger than a modern cup. If dried, as the chick peas at least must be, both assume overnight soaking; "scald" here most likely means to cover with boiling water, not to cook through. Fifteen minutes will not soften them. Soaked and pre-simmered beans, or drained canned ones added near the end, behave predictably.
- YieldThe original gives no yields. The farmer's-style stew, from three pounds of meat, would serve about six; the first uses a whole boned leg and would stretch much further, while the Turkish version leaves the quantity of meat unspecified. The first is finished with tomato sauce and served with rice; the Turkish stew is ladled over toast, which sops up an unthickened broth.
Oscar Tschirky was maître d'hôtel at the Waldorf from 1893 and his 1896 Cook Book is a working hotel compendium — the same dish given three ways so a chef could match a menu. That mutton fills so many pages is a period marker: sheep in nineteenth-century America were often kept chiefly for wool, and the older carcasses that resulted were cheap, strong-flavored, and everywhere on hotel bills of fare. The first recipe, marinated in vinegar and herbs then sealed under paper, follows the pattern of a French daube; the "farmer's style" is the standard à la paysanne treatment with root vegetables and a flour-thickened broth; and the Turkish version, with chickpeas and fried onion poured over toast, reflects the kind of loosely-attributed "foreign" dish that grand hotels used to signal cosmopolitan range. American mutton consumption declined across the twentieth century, most sharply after the Second World War, and with it the whole family of dishes these three represent.