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Mutton and Ham Pot Pie
Cut one and a half pounds raw lean leg of mutton and half pound raw lean ham into one-inch pieces. Thoroughly heat two ounces melted lard in a sautoire, add mutton and ham, season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper, and nicely brown for ten minutes. Add twelve peeled, small white onions and four peeled, raw, medium potatoes cut in half-inch squares, and brown for ten minutes more, stirring once in a while, drain on a sieve and return to pan. Dredge an ounce flour over, toss well, pour over two gills each water and pure tomato juice and one gill demi-glace, then add a blade mace, bay leaf, leaf of nutmeg, a teaspoon chopped parsley, tablespoon Worcestershire sauce and one teaspoon French mustard. Mix well and boil for fifteen minutes, transfer to baking dish and egg edges of dish. Roll out a half pound of pie paste to size of dish, then cover dish with layer of paste, press down all around border and trim off around edges. Make a few light incisions on surface, egg top, then set in a moderate oven to bake for forty-five minutes, remove and serve.
A Delmonico-style pot pie built on a browned stew rather than a raw filling, so the pastry only needs to bake, not to cook the meat through. Two of the measurements need translating before you start.
- GillsA gill is half a cup. The liquid works out to 1 cup water, 1 cup tomato juice and 1/2 cup demi-glace — 2 1/2 cups in all, which will look generous but reduces during the fifteen-minute boil.
- SautoireA straight-sided sauté pan, wide and shallow. A 12-inch skillet or a wide braiser does the same job; you want surface area for browning, not a stockpot.
- Moderate ovenUsually reckoned around 350F, sometimes given as 350-375F. Forty-five minutes browns the crust and carries on cooking the meat, which has already had twenty minutes' browning and a fifteen-minute boil.
- Demi-glaceClassically espagnole sauce and brown stock reduced together; in practice a strongly reduced brown stock. Commercial demi-glace concentrate diluted per the tub, or a strong homemade brown stock reduced by half, both work. Without it the gravy will be thinner and less rounded against the tomato juice.
- "Leaf of nutmeg"Genuinely unclear, and it sits oddly next to the blade of mace already in the list. Most likely a compositor's rendering of mace (the lacy aril of the nutmeg, sometimes called nutmeg flower); a scrape of whole nutmeg is the sensible reading. Do not add both a blade of mace and a large quantity of ground nutmeg.
- MuttonTrue mutton, usually reckoned sheep over a year old and often well over two, is scarce outside halal and specialist butchers. Leg of lamb substitutes directly with no change in method, though the flavour is milder and the meat will be tender sooner.
- HamRaw lean ham here means uncooked cured ham, not deli ham. Gammon, a raw country ham, or a thick slab of unsmoked bacon all serve. Because it is cured, taste before adding the full teaspoon of salt.
- Draining after browningThe step that keeps this from being greasy: the meat and vegetables go into a sieve to shed the lard before the flour goes on. Do not skip it, or the ounce of flour will be thickening fat as well as liquid.
- Egging the edgesBeaten egg on the rim of the dish glues the pastry down; egg on top gives the gloss. Cut the vents before the top wash, as the recipe has it, so the slashes do not seal shut.
- YieldTwo pounds of meat, twelve onions and four potatoes make a generous filling; allow a large baking dish, upwards of two quarts, and reckon on six or so servings. Rest it ten minutes before cutting or the filling floods the plate.
Alexander Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and his cookbooks read like a restaurant larder written out for domestic use -- hence demi-glace, a sautoire and an ounce of flour weighed rather than spooned, all in a dish nominally as homely as a pot pie. The combination of mutton with a little cured ham is old and thrifty: the ham supplies salt, fat and cured depth that lean mutton lacks, a pairing found in both British and French country cookery long before it reached a Manhattan dining room. The seasoning at the end -- Worcestershire sauce, French mustard and tomato juice -- leans on bottled and prepared flavours layered over the older mace and bay. The result is a British pie shape carrying an Anglo-American restaurant sauce.