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Haricot of Mutton, Paysanne
Cut a tender neck of mutton into two-and-a-half-inch pieces. Cut also three ounces lean, raw bacon into one-inch-square pieces. Thoroughly heat three tablespoons lard in a saucepan, add the mutton and bacon and gently brown for twenty minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile. Remove fat from the pan, sprinkle two tablespoons flour over, stir well, moisten with a pint water and half pint pure tomato juice. Add to the stew one sliced carrot, two sliced onions, two sliced branches celery, one bean garlic, one branch chervil, one bay leaf, one sprig thyme, one sprig mace and two cloves. Season with a heavy teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, mix well, cover the pan, let boil for fifteen minutes, then set in the oven for thirty-five minutes more, mixing with a wooden spoon twice meanwhile. Remove, lift up the bouquet, skim the fat from the surface, pour into a large, deep dish, sprinkle a little chopped parsley over and serve.
A plain brown mutton stew of the sort that anchored French bourgeois cooking. The recipe as written is sound, but two things need attention: the cooking time is far too short for neck meat, and the oven temperature is never given.
- Cook it far longerFifteen minutes on the stove plus thirty-five in the oven will not soften collagen-heavy neck. Give it 1.5 to 2 hours at a bare simmer, covered, until the meat pulls easily from the bone. This is the hinge of the dish; everything else is seasoning.
- Oven heatNo temperature is stated in the original. A moderate oven, around 325F, holds a covered stew just below a boil.
- MuttonTrue mutton (sheep over two years) is rare outside halal and specialist butchers. Lamb neck, cut into thick rounds, or boneless lamb shoulder in 2-inch chunks is the practical substitute; it will be milder and slightly quicker.
- "One bean garlic"A single clove, not a head. "Bean" here is probably a literal rendering of the French gousse, which means pod or clove.
- "One sprig mace"Mace is a spice, not an herb. The instruction means a blade of mace, the lacy covering of the nutmeg; a quarter-teaspoon of ground mace does the same work.
- The bouquetChervil, bay, thyme, mace and cloves are meant to be tied in a bundle or a scrap of cheesecloth so they can be lifted out whole, as the last paragraph assumes. Loose cloves are otherwise unpleasant to bite into.
- Paysanne"Peasant-style." In classical usage the word also names a vegetable cut; here the carrot, onion and celery are sliced rustic rather than diced fine. Cut them chunky enough to survive long cooking.
- Fat and liquidThree tablespoons of lard is right for browning; oil or beef fat works. A pint of water plus half a pint of tomato juice is 24 fl oz total, which barely covers the meat, so keep the lid tight and top up with water if the level drops.
- YieldThe recipe gives no weight of meat, only a neck, which would serve roughly four to six. Boiled or steamed potatoes are the usual accompaniment.
Despite the name, a haricot of mutton contains no beans. The word is generally traced to the Old French verb harigoter, to cut into pieces, and appears in English cookery as "hericot" or "harrico" of mutton well before the New World bean took the same spelling; cooks later assumed the two were connected and beans crept into some versions by folk etymology. The dish belongs to the everyday repertoire of French household cooking rather than the restaurant kitchen: cheap cuts, root vegetables, a tied bouquet of herbs, long moist heat.