No. 1641

Mutton Pilau, French Style

Pilau de Mouton a la Francaise

Remove the fat and bones from the thick end of a loin of mutton; divide the meats into regular one and a half inch pieces and fry them in butter for ten minutes; add sliced carrots and onions, mushroom peelings and salt; moisten to three-quarters of the height with mutton broth made with the bones and trimmings; reduce the moisture slowly to a glaze, then moisten and reduce once more; remoisten for the third time to the full height and continue to boil slowly until the meats are very nearly done, now lift them out one by one, pare nicely, and place them in a charlotte mold or a special tinned copper saucepan, provided with a hermetically fitted lid, strain the liquid over the meats, letting it reach slightly above their height and add three spoonfuls of tomato puree (No. 730), a tablespoonful of powdered sweet Spanish peppers and a little cayenne pepper. Boil, then add half a pound of well-picked and washed Carolina rice, dried for an hour on a sieve; close the saucepan hermetically and set it in the oven to cook the contents for twenty minutes without touching it--the rice should be kept quite whole. Serve this stew in a tureen or vegetable dish or else in the saucepan itself.

← No. 1640 Scotch Haggis Mutton No. 1642 Quarter of Mutton with Gastronome Potatoes →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's pilau is a braise finished as a rice pilaf in the same sealed pot. The technique is sound; only the vocabulary and hardware need translating.

The cutThe thick end of a loin of mutton, boned and trimmed, is roughly what a butcher would sell as boneless lamb loin. Lamb shoulder cut into 1½-inch pieces behaves better and costs far less; true mutton (sheep generally over a year, sometimes defined as over two) is a special order in most of North America.
Reducing to a glaze, three timesThis is the hinge. Each reduction concentrates gelatin and browns the pan, and skipping it leaves you with pale, thin liquid. Scrape the pan when the liquid tightens and starts to catch.
Mushroom peelingsAn economy of the professional kitchen, where mushrooms were turned for garnish and the trimmings went into stock. Use a handful of chopped stems or a few whole mushrooms; strain them out with the vegetables as the recipe directs.
Powdered sweet Spanish peppersSweet paprika. A tablespoonful is a lot but correct here use good unsmoked Hungarian or Spanish sweet paprika, and add it off the fiercest heat so it does not scorch bitter.
Carolina riceA long-grain American rice, the standard of the period; modern long-grain white is the nearest equivalent. Half a pound is about 1⅛ cups, roughly 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons; do not substitute a starchy short-grain, which will not stay "quite whole."
Liquid ratioThe strained braising liquid should sit slightly above the meat before the rice goes in; the recipe sets the amount by the height of the meat, not by a ratio to the rice. If you are short, top up with mutton or lamb broth rather than water.
Oven and vesselA charlotte mold with a tight lid, or Ranhofer's tinned copper pan, is simply a heavy pot that seals. Any Dutch oven with a well-fitting lid works; the recipe gives no temperature, so a moderate oven (around 350F) is a modern reading for the twenty minutes, and honor the instruction not to lift the lid.
YieldThe recipe does not state a quantity of meat; the thick end of a loin with half a pound of rice will serve roughly six as a main course. It reheats well, though the rice softens on the second day.

A Little History

Pilau is one of many nineteenth-century English spellings of the Persian polo, the family of dishes that runs through pilaf, pilav and pulao. Ranhofer, who ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894, labels this one à la française, and that is the point of the title: rather than steaming rice separately with spices in the Eastern manner, the meat is first braised down through three reductions in the classic French way, and the rice is then cooked in that finished braising liquid. The sealed "hermetic" pot and the instruction to leave it entirely alone for twenty minutes show how much the recipe depends on trapping steam in a tightly lidded vessel. Sweet Spanish paprika by the tablespoonful also places the dish: paprika became fashionable in grand hotel cooking of the era, most visibly in the Hungarian-inflected dishes that appear elsewhere in the same book.