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Timbales of Rice for Garnishing
Place four ounces of the best rice in a small saucepan with three-quarters of a pint beef broth. Season with two saltspoons salt and a saltspoon white pepper; cover the pan and boil for five minutes, then set the pan in the oven to steam for twenty minutes more. Remove, add half ounce butter and mix well. Lightly butter six small pudding moulds; fill them up with rice, unmould and use as required.
ROAST LEG OF MUTTON, WITH CURRANT JELLY Procure a leg of tender mutton of about seven pounds. Cut off the shank bone, trim well, and lightly pound it with a cleaver. Make a light incision on the first joint and insert a small bean garlic. Season with a tablespoon salt and a teaspoon pepper, well rubbed over. Lay it in a roasting pan, spread three tablespoons melted leaf lard all over, place in the oven to roast for one hour, turning it over once in a while and frequently basting with its own gravy. Remove, dress on a hot dish, skim the fat from the surface of the gravy, strain it over the mutton and serve with currant jelly separately.
Two entries have run together on this page: a small rice garnish and a roast leg of mutton. Both are written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen, where quantities were assumed and doneness was judged by eye.
- Saltspoons and gillsSaltspoons -- A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so the rice takes about ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon white pepper. Three-quarters of a pint is 1½ cups by US measure, a little under 2 cups if the book's imperial pint is meant; either works for 4 oz (a generous ½ cup) of rice.
- The oven stepNo temperature is given; a moderate oven, around 350F, is a reasonable reading. The five minutes of boiling only starts the grain; the twenty minutes of enclosed heat is what cooks it through without stirring it to paste.
- "The best rice"This most likely meant a good long-grain white rice, of the sort then sold as Carolina, rather than a short or parboiled grain. Use a plain long-grain white rice; it holds a moulded shape and releases cleanly.
- MouldsSmall pudding moulds here are dariole moulds of about 2 to 3 fluid ounces. Buttered ramekins, a muffin tin, or even a teacup will do. Pack the rice while hot, let it sit a minute, then invert.
- YieldSix timbales, meant as a garnish around a roast or a braise rather than as a course. They go cold and firm quickly, so mould them last.
- Mutton and lardMutton is sheep over about two years old, still sold by some halal and specialist butchers but absent from most supermarkets. A 7 lb leg of lamb substitutes directly and cooks faster. Leaf lard is the firm kidney fat of the pig; ordinary lard, beef dripping or a neutral oil serves the same purpose.
- One hour is not enoughA 7 lb leg roasted for a single hour comes out rare to the point of raw at the thick end. Cook to temperature rather than to the clock: 130-135F at the centre for rare, 145F for medium, then rest 20 minutes before carving.
- The garlic"A small bean garlic" means a clove trimmed to about the size of a bean, pushed into a slit at what the recipe calls the first joint. A single clove is all that is asked for a whole leg.
- Gravy and jellyThere is no flour and no stock here: the sauce is skimmed pan drippings, strained and poured over. The currant jelly is red currant, served on the side, and its sharpness is doing the work a sauce would otherwise do.
Alexander Filippini spent decades in the kitchens of Delmonico's in New York, and The International Cook Book reads like a professional's index rather than a home manual — hence a garnish recipe filed beside a roast. Moulded rice timbales belong to the vocabulary of service à la russe, where dishes arrived at the table already dressed and a plain roast was ringed with small identical shapes for the look of the platter as much as for eating. Mutton with red currant jelly is an English pairing of long standing, generally traced to the older practice of serving sharp fruit preserves with strong-flavoured meats; by the turn of the twentieth century it had hardened into convention on both sides of the Atlantic. That the leg is roasted barely an hour and served with nothing but its own skimmed gravy says something about how confident the period was in the flavour of mature sheep — a taste that largely disappeared from American tables as lamb replaced mutton over the following decades.