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Boiled Leg of Mutton
Put in boiling water with a little salt; boil two hours or more; make a sauce of melted butter, a piece of butter the size of a walnut; stir this into a tablespoonful of flour well, then stir into a pint of boiling water, with a tablespoonful of capers. Put into a gravy dish on the table, and garnish the dish with boiled cauliflower and parsley.
A plain boiled joint with caper sauce, once a Sunday standard in English and American households. Two things carry it: keeping the water at a bare simmer, and building the sauce properly rather than literally melting butter.
- Mutton, and what to use insteadMutton is sheep over about two years old, with a stronger flavour and more connective tissue; almost no US supermarket carries it. A 5 to 6 lb leg of lamb is the practical substitute, and it will cook faster than the two hours given here. Halal and some ethnic butchers do sell true mutton if you want the original flavour.
- Do not actually boil itThe word "boil" in this period covers anything from a hard rolling boil to a bare shiver, and here it should mean the latter. Bring the pot to a boil, then drop it to a gentle 180-190F simmer, or the outside of the joint will be dry and stringy before the centre is done.
- Timing and donenessTwo hours or more suits an older, tougher mutton leg. For lamb, cook to internal temperature rather than the clock: about 145-150F at the thickest point away from the bone, roughly 12-15 minutes per pound at a simmer. Rest the joint 15 minutes before carving.
- "Butter the size of a walnut"About 1 ounce, or 2 tablespoons. Shelled walnut, not the whole nut in its shell.
- The sauce is a roux, not melted butter"Melted butter" was the standard 19th-century name for a flour-thickened butter sauce. Cook the butter and flour together for a minute before adding liquid, or the sauce tastes of raw flour. One tablespoon of flour to a pint (2 cups) gives a very thin sauce; 2 to 3 tablespoons produces something closer to what most cooks now expect.
- Use the cooking liquorThe recipe says boiling water, but a pint of the strained, skimmed broth from the pot makes a markedly better sauce. Skim the fat off the top first. Capers go in at the end, off the heat, with a little of their brine and a grind of pepper to taste.
- ServingA 5 to 6 lb leg serves six to eight. Carve at the table, spoon the caper sauce over each portion rather than pouring it on the platter, and keep the cauliflower and parsley garnish as written; boiled potatoes and mashed turnip are common traditional accompaniments.
Boiled leg of mutton with caper sauce was one of the fixed points of the Anglo-American dinner table for much of the 19th century, praised in household manuals because it was undemanding: a large joint, a pot of water, and a sauce made from three things already in the kitchen. The capers do real work, their vinegar sharpness cutting the fattiness of an older sheep; where imported capers were too dear, pickled nasturtium buds or samphire were used in their place. Mutton receded from English-speaking kitchens over the 20th century as the trade shifted toward selling young lamb, which is why a dish this common in turn-of-the-century cookbooks now reads as unfamiliar.