No. 2375

Leg of Mutton Tart or Pie, Canadian

Tarte de Gigot de Mouton a la Canadienne

Butter the interior of a pie dish (Fig. 183); range on the bottom some blanched salt pork and slices of mutton from the leg; on top lay a bed of potatoes, baked in the oven, peeled and cut in slices; season each layer with salt, pepper, nutmeg, chopped parsley, and chopped onions fried in butter, and pour a little good clear gravy (No. 404) over. Wet the edges of the dish, lay on a narrow band of paste, moisten and cover the whole with a flat of puff paste fragments, decorating the top with devices of the same paste, egg it over twice, and bake in a moderate oven for an hour and a quarter.

← No. 2374 Lobster Tart or Pie a la a Herault Miscellaneous Entrées No. 2376 Oyster Tart or Pie, Smith Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

A layered meat-and-potato pie from Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), written for a cook who already has stock, puff paste trimmings and a hot range at hand. Two things decide whether it works: how thinly the mutton is cut, and how much liquid goes in.

Slice the mutton thinAn hour and a quarter at moderate heat will not tenderize thick slabs of leg. Cut the meat across the grain no more than 1/8 inch thick; the recipe does not say whether the slices are raw or from an already roasted leg, and either will work.
Moderate ovenThe recipe gives no temperature; around 350F is the usual modern equivalent. If the pastry is colouring too fast before the hour is up, tent it loosely with foil rather than dropping the heat, since the filling needs the full time.
Blanched salt porkCover the sliced pork with cold water, bring to a boil, drain and pat dry. This removes enough salt that the seasoning of the layers stays under your control; skipping it makes the finished pie aggressively salty.
"Good clear gravy (No. 404)"Ranhofer means a clear brown stock or light jus, not a thickened flour gravy. Use a well-reduced beef or lamb stock. A little goes in — roughly half a cup for a standard pie dish; more and the pastry base steams and the filling floods when cut.
Puff paste fragmentsThe trimmings left from other work in a professional kitchen, gathered and rerolled. Rerolled trimmings puff less evenly than fresh paste, which is why they suit lids better than vol-au-vents. Store-bought all-butter puff pastry is a fair stand-in.
The band of paste on the rimWetting the dish edge and pressing on a narrow strip before the lid gives the pastry something to grip. Without it the lid shrinks back off the rim as it bakes.
Egg it over twiceTwo thin coats of beaten egg, the second after the first has dried for a few minutes, give the deep gloss expected of a covered entrée. Avoid letting egg run down the cut edges, which glues the layers shut and stops them rising.
YieldThe recipe gives no yield or dish size; a standard 9-inch deep pie dish should serve about six as a main course. Rest it 10 minutes before cutting so the gravy settles.

A Little History

Ranhofer, long the chef of Delmonico's in New York, catalogued dishes by nationality, and "à la Canadienne" here signals the French-Canadian habit of baking meat, salt pork and potatoes together under a pastry lid — the family of pies that includes tourtière and, in its deeper layered form, cipaille, often said to derive from "sea pie" though the derivation is disputed. Salt pork is the tell: it was the everyday fat and seasoning of Quebec cooking, supplying richness to lean cuts long before refrigeration made fresh pork routine. Mutton rather than lamb is another period marker, since mature sheep were the norm on the nineteenth-century market and their stronger meat suited the nutmeg, parsley and fried onion given here. That a Delmonico's book carries the dish at all reflects how thoroughly Ranhofer's The Epicurean tried to be a complete reference, ranging from grand banquet cookery down to regional home dishes a New York kitchen might be asked to reproduce.