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Lancashire Hot-Pot
(England.) Take 3 1/2 pounds of choice mutton, in chops, from the neck, 4 mutton kidneys, 20 oysters, 4 onions, sliced, and 3 pounds of potatoes. Slice the potatoes and kidneys, and arrange all in alternate layers in a deep dish, seasoning with herbs, salt, and pepper. Put a layer of potatoes on top, and moisten with oyster juice. Bake in a slow oven until the top is crisp. Cover at first with a pie plate to keep in the steam, cooking about 3 1/2 hours.
A long, slow layered bake that needs very little attention, but two details in the original will trip up a modern cook: the oven temperature and the oysters.
- Oven temperatureA "slow oven" here means about 300F. At that heat the three and a half hours are realistic for neck chops on the bone; any hotter and the potatoes on top will colour long before the mutton gives up.
- The oystersTwenty oysters cooked for three and a half hours will be tough little knots. Reserve them and their liquor, and slip them in during the last few minutes of cooking, or cook them separately and serve them alongside. Oysters were cheap and plentiful in this period and were commonly used to bulk out meat dishes, so they were probably not being treated here as a delicacy to be protected.
- MuttonSheep old enough to be sold as mutton (usually reckoned at over a year, often nearer two) is hard to find outside a halal or specialist butcher. Lamb neck chops or bone-in shoulder chops give much the same result in less time; if you use lamb, check at two and a half hours.
- KidneysLamb kidneys need trimming of the white core and fat, and a soak in cold salted water or milk for half an hour cuts the strong smell that puts some people off. Slice them thin so they melt into the layers.
- The dishThe "deep dish" is usually taken to be the straight-sided earthenware hot-pot; a large deep casserole or Dutch oven stands in for it, and this quantity of meat and potatoes needs a roomy one. The pie plate laid over the top is simply a lid; foil or the pot's own lid does the same work.
- LiquidOyster liquor alone will not moisten this much meat and potato. Add lamb or light beef stock until it comes about two-thirds up the layers, no higher, or the top potatoes will steam instead of crisping.
- Crisping the topTake the cover off for the last 40 minutes and brush the top layer with a little melted dripping or butter. That is the step that turns it from a stew into a hot-pot.
- Herbs and yield"Herbs" in an English recipe of this period usually means thyme and a bay leaf, sometimes with parsley, though the recipe does not say. As written this feeds six to eight generously.
Lancashire hot-pot is associated with the industrial towns of the north-west of England, where a covered pot of layered mutton and potatoes could sit in a cooling oven -- or, it is often said, in a communal baker's oven -- through a working shift and be ready at the end of it. Whether the dish took its name from the tall glazed earthenware vessel or the vessel was named after the dish is not settled. The oysters are the period's fingerprint rather than a luxury flourish: through much of the nineteenth century oysters were cheap, plentiful food in Britain, and they were commonly used to eke out beef and mutton in pies and puddings, a habit that faded as the native beds were fished out and prices rose. Its appearance here, labelled simply "(England.)", suggests a book gathering national dishes from abroad for American home cooks.