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Saddle of Mutton, Beatrice
Tear off the skin that covers the fat, remove the kidneys and inside fat of four to five pounds tender saddle of mutton. Hash up very finely two ounces lean, raw veal, six medium, well-peeled and cleaned fresh mushrooms, one clove garlic, half ounce larding pork, two branches washed parsley, one of chervil and four of chives, place in a mortar with two egg yolks, three tablespoons bread crumbs, half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne pepper, one saltspoon grated nutmeg and a saltspoon of mixed ground spices; then pound the whole to a smooth pulp. Add half gill cream, pound for half minute more. Season the saddle all around with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Carefully spread the force all over, on top and inside as well. Cover the surface with exceedingly thin slices larding pork. Tightly tie the saddle around and totally envelop in well-oiled white paper. Place it in a small roasting pan and roast in the oven for one hour. Remove, take off the paper, untie, dress on a hot dish and keep hot. Boil in a small saucepan one gill of demi-glace with one tablespoon cognac for five minutes, pour the sauce around and serve.
A Delmonico-style roast: a stuffed and barded saddle, sauced with demi-glace. The recipe assumes a cook who already knows how to truss and how to judge a roast, so the two things it leaves out are the oven temperature and the doneness.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A saddle wrapped in oiled paper wants a fairly hot oven, 400-425F, for the hour indicated; the paper protects the surface from scorching. Judge by an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part of the loin rather than by the clock.
- The forcemeat is the hingeIt contains raw veal and raw egg yolk, so it cannot be treated as a garnish that rides along with a pink roast. Take the coating to at least 160F, and 165F is the figure usually given for stuffing that contains raw meat, even if that means the loin itself lands nearer medium than rare.
- Archaic measuresA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of cream is 4 tablespoons and a gill of demi-glace is 1/2 cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon: the two saltspoons of cayenne come to 1/2 teaspoon, which is assertive but not unreasonable across five pounds of meat.
- Larding porkThis generally means fresh pork fatback rather than streaky bacon, though in period American kitchens the term was sometimes used for lightly salted fat pork. Ask a butcher for fatback and slice it paper-thin, or use thin sheets of caul fat; sliced pancetta will work but adds cure and salt, so cut back the seasoning.
- "Force" and the mortar"Force" is forcemeat. A food processor does the pounding in under a minute, but pulse rather than run it, and add the cream last with the machine barely turning so the mixture stays a paste and does not break.
- White paperPlain unprinted paper brushed with oil; parchment is the modern equivalent and needs no oiling. Foil is not a substitute, as it steams the surface instead of shielding it.
- MuttonTrue mutton, over two years old, is uncommon at supermarkets. A saddle of hogget or a double loin of lamb of the same weight behaves the same way in the oven, though the flavour is milder and the fat less waxy.
- Herbs and demi-glaceChervil is seasonal and fades quickly; if it is unavailable, use a little more parsley plus a few tarragon leaves rather than dried chervil, which tastes of nothing. Demi-glace means a reduced brown veal stock, not a bouillon cube; a good commercial concentrate is a fair stand-in at this quantity.
- YieldFour to five pounds of saddle, bone in, serves six generously. Carve the loins in slices parallel to the backbone so each portion carries some of the coating.
The International Cook Book belongs to Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this dish shows the house style plainly: a classical French preparation given a woman's name. Escoffier-era kitchens catalogued garnishes and finishes by such names -- Rachel, Dubarry, Beatrice -- as a shorthand between cooks rather than as any claim of invention for a particular person; some of these names point to identifiable figures, such as Madame du Barry or the actress Rachel, while others cannot now be traced. The saddle itself, the unsplit double loin, was a grand roast of the Anglo-American dinner table, and mutton rather than lamb was still commonly expected into the early twentieth century; the barding with sheets of fresh pork fat and the wrapper of oiled paper suit a coal-fired oven, where the heat was uneven.