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Cold Mutton with Horseradish Sauce
Cut all the meat from the leg of mutton left over from yesterday, then cut it in thin slices, arrange them on a cold dish with a few leaves of well-cleaned lettuce and twelve small vinegar pickles around, and serve with a cold horseradish sauce separately.
This is an assembly instruction rather than a cooked dish, written for a household that expected a joint of meat to reappear at a second and third meal. The only real work is the sauce, which the original assumes you already know.
- The sauce is not in the recipeA cold horseradish sauce of this period is grated fresh horseradish folded into lightly whipped cream, with a little vinegar, salt and sometimes a pinch of sugar or a spoonful of fresh breadcrumbs to thicken. Prepared horseradish from a jar works, but drain it first or the cream will loosen.
- Slice thin, and against the grainLeg of mutton is a worked muscle and cold meat has no fat softening it. Thick slices eat tough; aim for slices you can see light through, cut across the fibres.
- "Vinegar pickles"Small sour cucumber pickles, i.e. cornichons or gherkins, not sweet bread-and-butter chips. Sweet pickles fight the horseradish.
- Mutton itselfTrue mutton is older sheep, generally reckoned at more than a year and often nearer two, and it is rarely sold in American or British supermarkets now; leftover roast leg of lamb is the ordinary substitute. It is milder, so be a little freer with the horseradish.
- Take the chill offStraight from the refrigerator the fat is waxy and the meat tastes of nothing. Fifteen to twenty minutes at room temperature before serving makes a large difference.
- YieldA picked-over leg will give roughly 1 to 1 1/2 lb of usable meat, enough for four as a light lunch with bread and butter alongside.
Cold sliced roast meat with a sharp sauce was a staple of the Victorian and Edwardian luncheon table, at a time when a leg of mutton was a substantial household expense and waste was frowned upon. Horseradish was a common partner: pungent enough to stand up to meat served cold, and cheap, since the root grows aggressively and keeps in a cellar all winter. The pairing of grated horseradish with cream is generally traced to central and northern Europe, where the root has long been eaten with boiled and roasted meats, and in English and American cookery it was most often associated with beef and mutton. That the recipe gives twelve pickles but no measurement at all for the sauce suggests which of the two the author expected a cook to already have in hand.