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Shoulder of Mutton, Flamande
Remove blade bone, slightly shorten shank bone, trim a little fat from a tender shoulder of mutton, season all over with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, fold it up and tie with string.
Cut half a small head of white cabbage in quarters, remove the core and stale leaves, boil in water for fifteen minutes, drain on a sieve, cut it in small pieces and keep on a plate. Cut four carrots and four white turnips in halves. Heat in a braising pan a tablespoon leaf lard, add shoulder and brown it for fifteen minutes, turning it once in a while; take up, add cabbage, carrots, turnips, two ounces raw lean bacon cut in half-inch thin square pieces, and season with a half teaspoon each salt and pepper. Lay shoulder on top, moisten with a half pint broth, cover pan, then set in oven for forty-five minutes. Draw pan to oven door, scoop out all you can with a Parisian potato scoop from two large, raw peeled potatoes, add to pan, turn shoulder and reset in oven for forty minutes longer. Remove, take up shoulder, untie, dress cabbage in centre of a large dish, arrange carrots and turnips around sides and potatoes at both ends of dish, place shoulder on top and serve.
A straightforward Flemish-style braise, but the original assumes a coal range and a butcher who will bone a shoulder for you. A few notes on vessels, temperature and meat.
- Oven temperatureNo number is given, which is normal for the period. A braise like this wants a steady 325-350F; hotter and the half pint of broth boils away before the meat is tender.
- Mutton versus lambMutton means an adult sheep, generally over a year old (many butchers reserve the word for over two), deeper in flavour and much firmer. It is sold now mainly by halal and specialist butchers. A 4-5 lb bone-in lamb shoulder is the usual substitute, but note that mutton will likely need considerably longer than the 85 minutes of oven time given here to become tender.
- The timing is the weak pointForty-five minutes plus forty is enough for a young lamb shoulder rolled thin, not for real mutton. Judge by feel: the meat should give easily against a fork before you take it up to carve.
- Parisian potato scoopA melon baller. The point is uniform spheres that cook evenly in the last forty minutes; cutting the potatoes into 1-inch chunks does the same job with less waste.
- MeasuresHalf a pint of broth is one cup. Two ounces of raw lean bacon is about two thick rashers, cut into half-inch lardons; unsmoked bacon or pancetta is closer to what was meant than modern heavily smoked bacon.
- Leaf lardThe firm fat from around the kidneys, prized for its clean flavour. Ordinary lard or the fat trimmed from the shoulder itself will do.
- Braising panA heavy lidded pot that goes from burner to oven -- a Dutch oven. The shoulder and all the vegetables must fit with the meat sitting on top, so allow 6-7 quarts.
- Why the cabbage is parboiledThe fifteen-minute boil and drain tempers the sulphurous edge that can otherwise dominate a long braise, and softens the cabbage before it joins the pan. Better not to skip it.
- YieldServes four to six as written, with the vegetables doing much of the work.
Flamande is French kitchen shorthand for "in the Flemish manner," and in the classical repertoire it generally signals this combination: cabbage, carrots, turnips, salt pork or bacon, and potatoes, braised together and dressed around the meat in separate heaps rather than stirred into one stew. It is the restaurant garnish version of the Flemish and northern French farmhouse habit of cooking a joint on top of its own vegetables. The insistence on scooping the potatoes into balls with a Parisian scoop, and on arranging cabbage in the centre with carrots at the sides and potatoes at the ends, marks this as a professional recipe written down for domestic readers -- characteristic of the international-style cookbooks that took hotel-kitchen dishes and set them out for households that still had a cook. Mutton was then cheap and widely eaten in Britain and northern Europe; its retreat from English-speaking markets in favour of young lamb over the twentieth century is the biggest obstacle to cooking a page like this as written.