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Leg of Mutton Potpourri
Cut a three-pound piece tender leg of mutton into two-inch-square pieces. Place them in an earthen pot, with a half pound lean raw pork cut in one-inch-square pieces, one ounce raw lean ham cut in half-inch squares, one carrot and one turnip cut in half-inch squares, four small peeled white onions, the rind of an orange cut in small squares, two beans crushed garlic, one teaspoon freshly chopped parsley, half teaspoon freshly chopped chives, half teaspoon freshly chopped chervil, one saltspoon thyme, one clove, one bay leaf, one teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper, one saltspoon grated nutmeg, one-half gill white wine, two tablespoons brandy, one pint water, one gill demi-glace and one and a half gills tomato sauce; mix well, then cover the pan. Knead on a table three ounces flour with three tablespoons water, so as to make a stiff dough. Place this paste all around the edges of the cover of the pot, so as to prevent evaporation, set the pan in a moderate oven and bake for two and a half hours. Remove and send to the table without uncovering it.
A sealed-pot braise in the older French manner, closer to a daube than to a stew. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the measures and one of the meats need translating.
- The seal is the pointThe flour-and-water rope around the lid is a luting paste, not decoration. It traps the steam and the volatile aromatics — orange, brandy, chervil — so the dish arrives at the table smelling of everything at once. A tight-fitting Dutch oven lid plus a sheet of foil crimped under it does the same job; the paste is more theatrical and no worse.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is 4 fl oz, half a cup. So half a gill of white wine is 1/4 cup, a gill of demi-glace is 1/2 cup, and one and a half gills of tomato sauce is 3/4 cup. A saltspoon is 1/4 teaspoon.
- "Two beans crushed garlic"Beans here means cloves. Two cloves, crushed.
- Moderate ovenThe recipe gives no temperature; a moderate oven is usually taken as somewhere in the 325-350F range. At that heat, sealed, two and a half hours suits two-inch pieces of mutton; lamb of the same size will likely be tender closer to two hours.
- MuttonMutton is sheep over about two years old — deeper flavoured, tougher, and rare outside halal and Caribbean butchers. Leg of lamb works with the timing above; hogget or lamb shoulder, being fattier and better worked, stands up to the full two and a half hours better than leg does.
- Demi-glaceReduced brown veal stock, thickened in the classic kitchen with espagnole. Commercial demi-glace concentrate diluted to 1/2 cup is the practical answer; failing that, 1/2 cup of strong reduced beef stock, though the sauce will be thinner.
- Orange rindPare it with a peeler and take no white pith, which turns bitter over two and a half hours in a closed pot. Cut the pared strips into small squares as directed.
- SaltA teaspoon of salt for three pounds of mutton plus pork and ham is modest, and the ham and demi-glace both bring their own. Taste at the table rather than salting harder at the start.
- YieldServes four to six with bread or boiled potatoes. There is a good deal of liquid — pint of water plus wine, brandy and sauces — so it eats as a stew, not a roast.
Potpourri is the French pot pourri, literally "rotten pot," a calque of the Spanish olla podrida — the long-simmered mixed-meat pot of the Iberian kitchen, where "rotten" meant only cooked to collapse. By the time this recipe was written the word had drifted in English toward dried flowers in a bowl, but in a professional kitchen it still meant what it says: several meats, several vegetables, one vessel, sealed and left alone. The luted lid belongs to the same tradition as the daube and the terrine — a way of getting concentrated, aromatic cooking out of an oven whose temperature nobody could read precisely. This book, Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906), was compiled by a Delmonico's man who spent decades collecting dishes by nationality, which is why a recipe this thoroughly French sits alongside the cooking of a dozen other countries. Mutton's prominence is period-typical: sheep were kept for wool as much as meat, and the older, stronger carcass was ordinary eating well into the twentieth century.