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Mutton or Lamb Stew
a Cut up three pounds of mutton or lamb-the inferior portions will do. Crack the bones, and remove the fat and skin. Put the meat-the pieces not more than an inch or two in length-in a pot with enough cold water to cover well, and set it where it will heat gradually. Add nothing until it has stewed an hour, closely covered; then throw in nice piece of salt pork cut in inch and half lengths; a chopped onion, and some pepper; cover and stew an hour longer, or until meat is very tender. Make out a little paste, as for the crust of a meat pie; cut into squares, and drop in the stew. Boil ten minutes, and season further by the addition of a little thyme and parsley. Thicken with two tablespoonfuls of flour stirred into a cupful of cold milk. Boil up once and serve in a deep covered dish. Try it for a family dinner. Lamb is even better than mutton.
A plain braise with dumplings, written for a cook who bought meat on the bone and knew what "a little paste" meant. The gaps are all in quantities.
- The cut"Inferior portions" means neck, shoulder and shank — exactly the collagen-rich cuts a long wet braise wants. Three pounds bone-in yields roughly four servings; ask for it cut across the bone into 1–2 inch pieces rather than cracking bones yourself.
- Cold water, gradual heatThis is the hinge. Starting in cold water and bringing it up slowly draws scum to the surface and keeps the meat from seizing. Skim the grey foam off in the first fifteen minutes, then hold the pot at a bare shiver — not a boil — for the whole two hours, or the lamb will be stringy.
- Salt porkUnsmoked cured belly. Modern salt pork can be very salty, so blanch it briefly if you are sensitive to salt, and hold back on further salting until the stew is thickened. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon or pancetta substitutes reasonably.
- No salt until laterNote the recipe adds nothing for the first hour. Season at the end, once the pork has given up its salt and the liquid has reduced.
- "A little paste, as for the crust of a meat pie"A short suet or lard pastry, cut into squares and poached on top of the stew — dumplings, not a lid. About 1 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/3 cup suet or cold lard and enough cold water to bind gives the right quantity for three pounds of meat. Keep the pot covered for the ten minutes so they steam.
- Flour in cold milkTwo tablespoons flour whisked smooth into a cup of cold milk is a thin slurry; add it in a stream while stirring, then bring the stew just to a boil to cook out the raw flour. It will thicken lightly rather than turn the stew into gravy.
- Herbs at the endThyme and parsley go in after the dumplings, which keeps the parsley green. A teaspoon of thyme leaves and a good handful of chopped parsley is about right.
- Total time and yieldRoughly two and a half hours, almost all unattended. Serves four generously with bread; the deep covered dish the recipe calls for would also help keep the dumplings from drying at the table.
Mutton stew of this shape — cheap cuts, water, salt pork, an onion, dumplings dropped on top — runs straight through nineteenth-century American and British household cookery and changes very little from decade to decade. The salt pork is the American signature: it supplied fat and seasoning in one item from a barrel that kept without refrigeration, and it turns up in the same role in chowders, baked beans and pot pies throughout these books. The closing note that "lamb is even better than mutton" catches a shift often said to have been underway as American appetite moved toward younger, milder meat and mutton slid from ordinary dinner toward something older cooks remembered. Compilations of this kind routinely printed recipes that assumed the reader could make a pie paste from memory — hence "make out a little paste" with no quantities at all.