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August 24
Menu: Boiled Mutton, Caper Sauce; Riced Potatoes; Olive Salad; Toasted Crackers; String Beans; Cheese; Plum Compote Coffee Boiled Mutton-Wipe leg of mutton, put on fire, barely covered with boiling water, and let boil about 10 minutes, then simmer until tender; season with salt when half cooked. A few slices of onion, turnip, and carrot, or 2 or 3 stalks of celery, may be added while cooking. When tender, brush over the meat with melted Crisco and sprinkle with finely chopped parsley. Serve with caper sauce which is made as follows: Mix 2 tablespoons Crisco with 1 tablespoon flour; add 1 cup boiling water; stir it over fire until thick; add to it 1 hard-cooked egg chopped fine and 2 tablespoons of capers.
A plain boiled leg of mutton with a water-based caper sauce, printed as one day's dinner in Crisco's promotional calendar. The method is sound; the main obstacles are the meat itself and the vagueness of the timings.
- Simmer, never boilThe ten-minute boil is only to set the surface; after that the water must stay at a bare tremble, around 180-190F. A rolling boil squeezes the muscle fibres and gives you stringy, dry mutton no matter how long you cook it.
- Mutton and its substituteMutton is meat from a mature sheep; definitions vary, generally over one to two years old, with a strong flavour and firm fat. Butchers in most places now stock lamb rather than mutton; a 5-6 lb bone-in leg of lamb behaves much the same way but cooks faster and tastes milder. If you find true mutton, expect a longer cook and more surface fat to skim.
- How long is "until tender"Figure roughly 20-25 minutes per pound for lamb and half again for mutton, so 2 to 3 hours for a whole leg. It is done when a skewer slides into the thickest part with no resistance; 175-180F at the bone gives sliceable, fully relaxed meat.
- Salting at half timeThe instruction to salt when half cooked is worth following if you want the cooking liquid as broth. About a tablespoon of salt per gallon seasons the meat and liquid lightly without heavily salting the broth.
- Crisco and the sauceCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening, and the book exists to sell it. Butter makes a better caper sauce; the fat, flour and liquid proportions are unchanged.
- The caper sauce is thin by designTwo tablespoons fat to one tablespoon flour and a cup of liquid produces a loose, pourable sauce. Use the strained mutton broth instead of the boiling water called for and it gains everything it otherwise lacks. Cook the roux a minute before adding liquid, and add a spoonful of the caper brine plus pepper at the end.
- Vegetables in the potThe onion, turnip, carrot and celery are there to flavour the broth, not to be eaten; they will be exhausted after two hours. Add fresh vegetables in the last 30 minutes if you want them on the plate.
- YieldA 5-6 lb leg serves six to eight. The sauce as written makes about a cup, enough for that number if it is spooned rather than poured.
Boiled leg of mutton with caper sauce was one of the fixed points of nineteenth-century English and American dinner tables, and its pairing with capers is old enough that cookbooks long treated it as the standard accompaniment - the sharp, briny buds cutting the heavy fat of an older sheep. What is distinctive here is the frame: Procter & Gamble's calendar-of-dinners material wrapped a year's worth of menus around its new hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, so a traditional joint acquires two Crisco substitutions for butter - a brushing of melted shortening over the meat, and a shortening roux under the caper sauce. The dish is also a reminder of how much sheep Americans once ate; mutton fell steeply out of favour over the following decades, and the leg that this recipe assumes would be sold as lamb today.