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January 31
Menu: Spinach Soup; Irish Stew Baked Macaroni; Onion and Lettuce Salad; Cheese Puffs; Golden Parfait; Coffee Irish Stew-1 pound middle neck mutton, 2 pounds potatoes, 4 onions, 1 tablespoon Crisco, bunch of herbs, pepper and salt, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 teaspoon chopped parsley, and cold water. Peel Put Crisco into saucepan with mutton which should be cut into small pieces. Peel and quarter onions, and put them in saucepan, add herbs and barely cover with cold water. potatoes, choose small ones and do not cut them up, and lay over meat, sprinkle little salt and pepper on potatoes and bring to boil. Then add flour and stand saucepan where it will stew gently 2 hours. Take out herbs, season to taste with salt and pepper. Dish up meat in circle on flat dish, put potatoes and onions in center, leaving 1 potato in saucepan, to mash and thicken the gravy a little, pour gravy over stew, and sprinkle with parsley. Inferior cuts of mutton can be used advantageously for this dish, such as scrag-end or breast of mutton; the bones and gristle with long stewing give a nice flavor to the dish.
A plain mutton stew from Crisco's dinner calendar, written in the compressed telegraphic style those day-by-day menu books used. Quantities are left to the cook, so work from the proportions below.
- Working proportionsFor four people: about 2 lb bone-in mutton or lamb (shoulder, neck or breast), 2 tablespoons Crisco or another neutral solid fat, 3 medium onions, 1 1/2 lb small potatoes, a bay leaf and a few sprigs of thyme and parsley, and 1 to 2 tablespoons flour. Water should barely cover the meat and onions before the potatoes go on top.
- Mutton is now lambTrue mutton -- sheep of two years or more, sometimes much older -- is a special order from a halal butcher or a farm supplier. Hogget or lamb shoulder behaves much the same way in this dish but is milder and may reach tenderness closer to 90 minutes than two hours.
- The hinge: potatoes sit on topThe potatoes are laid over the meat, not stirred in, so they steam rather than boil apart. Keep them whole and small, and do not disturb the pan once it settles into its simmer, or they will break up and cloud the gravy before the meat is done.
- "Stew gently" means barely bubblingThe instruction to stand the pan where it will stew gently comes from a coal range with cooler edges. On a modern hob that is the lowest setting with the lid on, the liquid barely moving; a rolling boil will make the mutton stringy no matter how long you give it.
- Adding the flourFlour shaken straight into simmering liquid lumps. Either stir it into the melted Crisco with the meat at the start to make a light roux, or slake it with a little cold water first.
- Browning is optional hereThe meat goes into the fat but is never told to color, which is why this is a white stew in the Irish manner rather than a brown one. Browning first will change the character of the dish -- richer, darker gravy, less of the clean mutton-and-onion flavor the recipe is after.
- Season at the endOnly a little salt and pepper goes on at the start. Long reduction concentrates it, so the final seasoning after the herbs come out is the one that counts.
- ServingServes four on the proportions above. The reserved potato finishes the thickening that the flour began -- crush it into the gravy with a fork and whisk until the liquid just coats a spoon.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was a promotional cookbook from Procter & Gamble, published a couple of years after the company introduced hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, and its Calendar of Dinners existed to put Crisco into every kind of dish a household already cooked -- here, in place of the dripping or suet a stew like this would ordinarily have started with. The dish itself is essentially Irish stew, the mutton-onion-potato combination generally traced to nineteenth-century Irish and British household cookery, where its virtue was that it made scrag-end and breast palatable. The closing note about bones and gristle giving a nice flavor is the honest heart of the recipe: this is a formula built around the cheap end of the carcass, and the gelatin from those bones is what gives the gravy body long before the mashed potato is stirred in.
A plain mutton stew from Crisco's dinner calendar, written in the compressed telegraphic style those day-by-day menu books used. Quantities are left to the cook, so work from the proportions below.
- Working proportionsFor four people: about 2 lb bone-in mutton or lamb (shoulder, neck or breast), 2 tablespoons Crisco or another neutral solid fat, 3 medium onions, 1 1/2 lb small potatoes, a bay leaf and a few sprigs of thyme and parsley, and 1 to 2 tablespoons flour. Water should barely cover the meat and onions before the potatoes go on top.
- Mutton is now lambTrue mutton -- sheep of two years or more, sometimes much older -- is a special order from a halal butcher or a farm supplier. Hogget or lamb shoulder behaves much the same way in this dish but is milder and may reach tenderness closer to 90 minutes than two hours.
- The hinge: potatoes sit on topThe potatoes are laid over the meat, not stirred in, so they steam rather than boil apart. Keep them whole and small, and do not disturb the pan once it settles into its simmer, or they will break up and cloud the gravy before the meat is done.
- "Stew gently" means barely bubblingThe instruction to stand the pan where it will stew gently comes from a coal range with cooler edges. On a modern hob that is the lowest setting with the lid on, the liquid barely moving; a rolling boil will make the mutton stringy no matter how long you give it.
- Adding the flourFlour shaken straight into simmering liquid lumps. Either stir it into the melted Crisco with the meat at the start to make a light roux, or slake it with a little cold water first.
- Browning is optional hereThe meat goes into the fat but is never told to color, which is why this is a white stew in the Irish manner rather than a brown one. Browning first will change the character of the dish -- richer, darker gravy, less of the clean mutton-and-onion flavor the recipe is after.
- Season at the endOnly a little salt and pepper goes on at the start. Long reduction concentrates it, so the final seasoning after the herbs come out is the one that counts.
- ServingServes four on the proportions above. The reserved potato finishes the thickening that the flour began -- crush it into the gravy with a fork and whisk until the liquid just coats a spoon.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was a promotional cookbook from Procter & Gamble, published a couple of years after the company introduced hydrogenated cottonseed shortening, and its Calendar of Dinners existed to put Crisco into every kind of dish a household already cooked -- here, in place of the dripping or suet a stew like this would ordinarily have started with. The dish itself is essentially Irish stew, the mutton-onion-potato combination generally traced to nineteenth-century Irish and British household cookery, where its virtue was that it made scrag-end and breast palatable. The closing note about bones and gristle giving a nice flavor is the honest heart of the recipe: this is a formula built around the cheap end of the carcass, and the gelatin from those bones is what gives the gravy body long before the mashed potato is stirred in.