A British lamb pie that Eugene Walter misnames Mobilian.

Walter adored his native city of Mobile, or rather his memory of it before he insists with some justification that the overlapping cults of Baptists and temperance fanatics destroyed it during and after the second world war. Walter had a pronounced proclivity for pronouncing any dish he liked a product of the city. In a way it is unfair to accuse him of appropriation--it always should be unfair to accuse anyone of appropriation--because, according to a number of scholars including Harvey Levenstein, southern foodways in general and Mobilian foodways in particular remained staunchly British at least into the early twentieth century. This recipe from Walter’s Delectable Dishes from Termite Hall is a good example of that. It could have emerged from the Manchester kitchen of Mr. Thomas,’ suddenly renamed Mrs. Sarah’s, Chophouse back in the days of the Chartists.

• 3 Tablespoons bacon fat
• 3 Tablespoons butter
• 2 lb lamb cut into 2 inch cubes
• a big sweet onion cut into the thinnest arcs
• 2 Tablespoons flour (preferably Wondra)
• 2 cups hard cider
• 2 cups lamb stock if you have it or water if you do not
• cayenne
• heaped teaspoon dried marjoram
• scant ½ teaspoon powdered ginger
• some Worcestershire
• salt and pepper
• 2 or 3 sliced hard boiled eggs
• generous ½ cup chopped scallion greens
• pastry for a 10 inch lid or frozen puff pastry, thawed

Preheat the oven to 400˚.

1. Compulsively dry the lamb or it will not brown,
2. Melt the fat and butter in a heavy skillet over medium high heat and brown the lamb; do not crowd the meat then remove it from the pan.
3. Reduce the heat to medium and cook the onion with some good salt until they soften but do not brown, usually in less than 10 minutes.
4. Return the meat to the skillet, stir in the flour and then pour on the cider: Increase the heat to high to reduce it by half.
5. Add the stock or water, bring the filling to a boil, then reduce it to a simmer and add all the seasonings.
6. Cover the skillet and simmer the filling for about 20 minutes. Let it cool.
7. Drop half the filling into a deep 9 inch pie dish, top it with the egg and top the egg with the rest of the filling followed by the scallion.
8. Crip the pastry atop the pie and bake it until it turns a deep golden brown, usually in about 20 minutes.

Notes:

-Walter specifies either water or half water and half white wine. He does not reduce the liquid.

-He does not use cayenne, Worcestershire or the scallion greens either, and places his sliced eggs atop the filling.

-We have doubled the amount of ginger and tripled the marjoram.