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Lamb Stewed with Pease
Cut the neck or breast in pieces, put it in a stew-pan with some salt pork sliced thin, and enough water to cover it; cover close and let stew until the meat is tender, then skim free from scum, add a quart of green pease shelled, and more hot water, if necessary; cover till the pease are done tender, then add a bit of butter rolled in flour, and pepper to taste; let simmer for a few minutes and serve.
A plain braise of cheap lamb cuts finished with peas and a butter-and-flour liaison. Two things need attention: the peas and the fat.
- The cutsNeck and breast are bony, fatty and full of connective tissue, which is why the recipe leans on long, gentle stewing. Neck slices (scrag) or a breast cut between the ribs both work; allow 1 1/2 to 2 hours at a bare simmer before the meat gives way. Boneless shoulder will cook faster but yields a thinner-bodied broth.
- Salt porkA few thin slices of salt pork supply fat and salt to lean lamb. Rinse it if it is heavily cured, and hold back any additional salt until the end. Unsmoked streaky bacon or pancetta stands in reasonably; smoked bacon changes the dish's character.
- "A quart of green pease shelled"Most likely a quart measured after shelling, i.e. 4 cups or about 1 1/4 lb of shelled peas, which is roughly 3 lb in the pod. If you buy them podded or frozen, a generous pound is about right.
- Do not cook the peas till "tender" in the old senseOlder market peas were generally starchier than modern varieties and may well have wanted a long boil, which is likely what "done tender" meant here. Modern garden or frozen peas are sweet and thin-skinned: 4 to 6 minutes for fresh, 2 to 3 for frozen, added at the very end. Longer and they turn grey and mealy.
- Skim before, not afterThe instruction to skim once the meat is tender matters more than it sounds. Neck and breast throw a great deal of fat and scum; lift it off thoroughly, or the finished sauce will be greasy and the flour will not bind cleanly. Chilling the stew and lifting the set fat is easier still if you can cook it a day ahead.
- Butter rolled in flourThis is beurre manié. Work about 2 tablespoons soft butter into 2 tablespoons flour, drop it in in small pieces, and simmer a few minutes to cook out the raw flour taste. It should leave the broth lightly bound, not thick.
- Seasoning and finishPepper is the only seasoning named. A little chopped mint or parsley stirred in at the end is period-appropriate and lifts the sweetness of the peas.
- YieldAbout 3 lb of bone-in lamb and a pound of peas serves four generously, with bread or plain boiled potatoes.
"Pease" is the older English form, a singular noun for the vegetable that was reinterpreted as a plural and gave us the back-formed "pea"; cookbooks kept the archaic spelling well into the nineteenth century. The pairing of lamb with new peas is a spring dish by necessity in the era before freezing, arriving when the year's early peas and the cheap end of the lamb carcass overlapped. Neck and breast were the cuts a thrifty household could afford. The Dixie Cook Book belongs to the family of compiled, subscription-sold household volumes of the 1880s, assembled largely from contributed and reprinted receipts, which is why the instructions read as a single unbroken paragraph with no quantities for anything but the peas: the writer assumed a cook who already knew what a stew looked like.