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Shoulder of Mutton, Etuvee, with Potatoes
Procure a small, tender shoulder of mutton. Carefully bone it all over, then cut the meat into as thin slices as possible and place on a dish. Season with two teaspoons salt, half teaspoon white pepper, adding one teaspoon chopped chives, half teaspoon chopped chervil, half bean finely chopped garlic and three finely chopped shallots. Carefully mix the meat with the ingredients and keep on the dish till required.
Finely mince three medium, raw, peeled potatoes; wash and drain well. Lightly butter a cocotte dish (earthen pan), cover the bottom with a layer of one-quarter of the potatoes, lightly season the potatoes with two saltspoons salt and a saltspoon pepper; arrange a quarter of the meat over the potatoes, well spread, then another quarter of mutton, and so on until all finished. Then pour in two gills boiling water, boil for two minutes on the range; then set in the oven to bake for one and a half hours. Remove and serve.
A layered mutton-and-potato bake, closer to a Lancashire hot pot than to anything called a casserole today. The measurements are pre-metric American restaurant shorthand, and one or two of the instructions have clearly been garbled in setting.
- The hinge: keep it coveredÉtuvée means cooked in its own steam, so the cocotte needs its lid on for the full bake. The recipe never says so, but with only a cup of water and an hour and a half in the oven, an uncovered dish will dry out and the top layer of potato will scorch.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so two gills of boiling water is one cup. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon — the seasoning between potato layers is about 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper.
- "Half bean" of garlic"Half bean" of garlic — an old cookbook rendering of a garlic clove, probably by way of the French gousse; read it as half a clove. Three shallots plus garlic, chives and chervil is a classic fines herbes-adjacent seasoning, and the chervil is worth seeking out rather than substituting parsley.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A covered earthenware dish of sliced meat and potato wants a moderate oven, 325–350F, for the stated hour and a half; hotter and the liquid boils away before the potato is tender.
- The cocotteAn earthenware or enameled cast-iron pot with a lid, not the small individual ramekin the word suggests now. Anything around 2 quarts with a tight lid works, and the heavier the better since the dish goes from the stovetop to the oven.
- MuttonTrue mutton — sheep over a year old — is scarce outside halal and specialty butchers in the United States. A boned lamb shoulder of about 2 to 2 1/2 lb behaves the same way and will be milder; keep the fat, as it carries the dish.
- Slicing and mincingSlices "as thin as possible" come much easier if the boned shoulder is firmed in the freezer for 30 minutes first. "Finely mince" the potatoes means very thin slices or a coarse shred; the washing and draining removes surface starch so the layers stay distinct.
- The layering, as writtenThe text slips and says meat over meat. The intent is alternating layers, four of each, beginning with potato on the buttered bottom as the recipe directs.
- YieldA small shoulder and three potatoes serves four generously as a one-dish meal. Let it settle ten minutes off the heat before serving, and spoon down through the layers rather than portioning from the top.
The dish belongs to the professional French repertoire that ran American hotel and restaurant kitchens at the turn of the twentieth century. Étuvée — from étuve, a stove or sweating-room — describes cooking in a closed vessel with almost no added liquid, so the meat braises in its own juices and the fat it renders, which the layered potato absorbs. Mutton was then ordinary sheep meat on English tables and still common on American ones, cheaper and stronger-flavoured than lamb, and boning a shoulder and slicing it thin shortens the cooking a tough cut would otherwise need. That mutton has all but vanished from English-speaking markets is one of the sharper changes in taste the period's cookbooks record: what was ordinary here is now the specialty order.