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Braised Loin of Mutton
3 lbs. loin mutton 3 tablespoonfuls Crisco 1 celery stalk 12 teaspoonful whole white peppers 1 bunch sweet herbs Salt, pepper, and red pepper to taste 1 turnip 1 carrot 3 cloves 2 sprigs parsley 4 tablespoonfuls flour ½ button mushrooms 1 onion Remove bone from mutton, rub with a little salt, pepper and red pepper mixed together; roll up and tie in neat roll with tape; cut up celery, onion, carrot and turnip, and lay them at bottom of saucepan with herbs and parsley; lay mutton on top of these, and pour enough boiling water to three parts cover it, and simmer slowly two hours; lift mutton into roasting tin with a few tablespoonfuls of the gravy; set in hot oven until brown; strain gravy and skim off fat, melt Crisco in saucepan, add flour, then add gravy gradually, seasoning of salt and pepper, mushrooms, and boil eight minutes. Set mutton on hot platter with mushrooms round, and gravy strained over.
A two-stage braise: a long simmer in aromatic liquid, then a hot oven to colour the outside, with the cooking liquid turned into a flour-thickened sauce. Nothing here is difficult, but several of the ingredients and vessels need translating.
- Mutton, and what to use insteadMutton means sheep over about two years old — strong-flavoured, firm, and essentially unavailable in American supermarkets. Hogget or a bone-in lamb loin of the same weight works; lamb is milder and will be tender well before the two hours are up, so check at 75-90 minutes.
- "Tie in neat roll with tape"Narrow cotton tape was commonly used for tying joints in cookbooks of this period. Use plain cotton butcher's twine at 1-inch intervals; the roll must be snug or the boned loin will unwind in the liquid.
- Three parts cover, not submergeThis is the hinge of the dish. Liquid to about three-quarters the height of the meat keeps the top exposed so it does not poach grey, and concentrates the gravy. Keep it at a bare shiver — a rolling boil squeezes the loin tough and clouds the stock.
- "Hot oven"Roughly 400-450F. It is there only to brown the surface, which takes 15-20 minutes; longer and the meat you just braised dries out.
- A bunch of sweet herbsA bouquet garni: thyme, marjoram or savory, a bay leaf, tied with the parsley so it can be lifted out. Two or three sprigs of each is plenty for 3 lbs of meat.
- Whole white peppersWhole white peppercorns, added to the braise for perfume rather than heat. They go in with the vegetables and are removed when the gravy is strained. The "red pepper" in the rub is cayenne.
- Crisco and the rouxCrisco is hydrogenated vegetable shortening, still sold; butter or the skimmed braising fat both give a better-tasting sauce. Cook the flour in the fat for a minute or two before adding liquid, or the gravy tastes pasty. Four tablespoons of flour to roughly 2 cups of strained stock gives a thick, old-fashioned sauce — slacken it with more stock if you want it pourable.
- Button mushroomsIn 1913 these were small cultivated mushrooms, often sold canned. Fresh ones will release water into the sauce; eight minutes of boiling is enough to cook them but consider searing them separately and adding them at the end so they stay firm.
- YieldA 3 lb loin, boned, serves four to six. Serve with something to take the gravy — mashed potato or plain boiled rice.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was a Procter & Gamble promotional cookbook published shortly after the company introduced Crisco, a hydrogenated cottonseed-oil shortening, in 1911. Its purpose was to persuade cooks that a manufactured fat could stand in for lard and butter across the whole range of ordinary cooking, which is why Crisco appears here in a dish that barely needs it — three tablespoons in the roux, on a piece of meat that supplies plenty of its own fat. The recipe itself is thoroughly conventional English braising, of the sort found in Victorian and Edwardian household manuals: bone and roll the loin, simmer it on a bed of root vegetables, brown it off, and thicken the liquor. Mutton was still a normal American purchase in 1913; by mid-century US sheep production had shrunk and the market shifted almost entirely to young lamb, which is why the cut named in the title is now the hardest thing on the list to find.