Welsh Mutton Recipes from 1867

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From Good Cookery Illustrated by Augusta Llanover, 1867.

Roast Leg of Mutton

Leg of mutton weighing five lbs.; put on the hook attached to the yarn, which hangs from a crank, 24 inches from the fire, basted with clarified dripping, or suet. Keep an earthen pan on the bottom of the screen next the dripping-pan; after basting, ladle all the gravy, or liquid fat, out of the dripping- pan into the earthen pan, from which it can be taken as often as needed to baste, and again returned.

A leg of mutton of this size will take about three hours; half an hour before it is finished, put it four inches nearer the fire; put half a pint of boiling water in a watering-pot with the rose on, salt to taste, and pour over the joint slowly, which will produce a great increase of gravy, and when browned again after the watering, and well basted, sprinkle flour all over it with a flour dredger, and again baste to froth it.

The gravy to be served with the meat should, if possible, have been saved from a previous joint, and warmed in a double saucepan; but, if not practicable, the gravy should be taken out of the dripping-pan after the watering, and placed in a basin or dish to cool, and when the fat is sufficiently congealed to be removed, the clear gravy can be rewarmed in a double saucepan, and would be ready to be served with the meat by the time it is frothed and dished.

Welsh Mutton Chops

Cut the chops off the neck of Welsh mutton; do not remove the fat, and trim as little as possible; broil on a gridiron over a sharp fire; sprinkle with a little pepper and salt; take care not to scorch or to let the gravy fall upon the hot stove; serve in a very hot dish with their own unadulterated gravy; do not add butter or any made sauces: about ten minutes will finish them.

The Hermit considered that mutton chops never were so good as when served between two hot plates separately to each person.

Mutton chops cut from a neck or loin, and fried in batter the moment they are taken off the gridiron, make an excellent dish. They should be fried in top fat from veal or beef soups. The batter is one tablespoonful of flour mixed with as much milk as will make it a smooth paste; add one egg beaten up; dip the chops hot into the batter, and fry for about five minutes in a stewpan: a little salt may be added to the batter if liked and chopped vegetables, but they are not necessary.

Hashed Mutton

Cut as much mutton as is required from the remainder of a roast leg in pointed pieces. Fry one ounce and a half of onion, and the same of celery chopped fine, and one ounce of turnip, with a sufficient quantity of fresh top fat, cut in small pieces, from soup or broth, stirred round and round over a stove or fire in a clean tin saucepan for ten minutes; then add as much flour as will stiffen it into a paste of the consistency of wet mortar, and stir round and round over the stove for five minutes more; then add a sufficient quantity of the jelly from the bone of the leg of roast mutton, to be of the consistence of thick pea-soup; then pour the whole into a double sauce-pan, in the outside of which there must be a sufficient quantity of boiling water to fill within an inch of the top of the inner saucepan.

Let the whole simmer gently for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes; then pour through a wire sieve and return into a clean double saucepan, which replace on the stove; taste, and if it requires any further flavouring of herbs or vegetables, add them; then put in the prepared pieces of meat, stir well, and let it remain in a very slow heat for half an hour, when it will be ready for the table.

Hashed Mutton (Simple)

Prepare the cold mutton as directed in No, 4; salt it slightly, flour it lightly, turning it well over with two forks; put it into a double saucepan, with a sufficient quantity of jelly from the bones of mutton previously flavoured with onion and herbs; let the meat remain in this sauce in a gentle heat, frequently stirred for three quarters of an hour before it is served. If there is no jelly from mutton bones, clear gravy from roast mutton, similarly flavoured, would be very good.

Mutton Pie

Neck or loin of mutton, five pound’s, cut in chops, put in a double saucepan with half a quarter of a pint of water to the pound; add one pound of vegetables chopped fine (onions and celery equal quantities, turnips and carrots half the quantity); a sprinkling of salt. Stew for two hours; when the meat is sufficiently tender, take it off, pour the liquor into a basin to cool, and cut the meat off the bones, removing also the superfluous fat.

When the liquor is cold take the solid fat off the top, and the stock will then be in a jelly; add this jelly to the meat which has been cut off the bones, and place the whole in a thick crockery basin over a saucepan of boiling water until the jelly has melted amongst the meat, and the whole is warmed through; then remove till the next day, when the meat will be imbedded in the jelly which will have cooled round it, and of which it will have absorbed a great deal. The meat and jelly can then be placed in layers in the pie-dish, and there ought to be (if done properly) considerably more jelly than is required for gravy for the pie, which overplus is to be kept back; a little fresh parsley chopped small is to be sprinkled between the meat.

The paste for the pie is to be made with six ounces of flour, three ounces of the top fat, taken off the mutton jelly, and put on the fire in a saucepan with a quarter of a pint of water; when the water boils make a hole in the middle of the flour and pour in the boiling water and mutton fat by degrees, mixing the fat in with a spoon when well mixed, knead it till of the proper stiffness, and dredge the board with flour to make it smooth; cover your pie, make a hole in the top, and form a little ornament with a small stem to fit into it.

Fill your baking tin with water under the pie-dish to prevent too great a heat to the bottom: when the paste is baked the pie is done. Screw out the top ornament and pour in as much liquid mutton jelly as the pie can receive, which must be previously warmed in a double sauce-pa ; replace the ornament, and serve the pie.

N.B.—A pie after baking will always take a good deal of extra gravy, but it will not take nearly all that the meat has produced when properly done, and of which there ought to be more to spare, which can be used for soups or sauces, or added to mutton broth.

Llanover, Augusta. Good Cookery Illustrated and Recipes Communicated by the Welsh Hermit of the Cell of St. Gover, with Various Remarks on Many Things Past and Present. Richard Bentley, 1867.

Augusta Llanover

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