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Delicious Flavor to Lamb
Put in the water in which the lamb is boiled some whole cloves and sticks of cinnamon; to one leg of lamb put a small handful of cloves and two long sticks of cinnamon. This gives a delicious flavor to cold lamb; in roasting lamb, boil cinnamon and cloves in water and baste the meat.
This is a flavouring method rather than a full recipe: it assumes you already know how to boil or roast a leg of lamb and only tells you what to put in the water. The points below fill in the parts the original takes for granted.
- Quantities, in modern termsA "small handful" of whole cloves is perhaps 2 tablespoons or more; "long sticks" of cinnamon means longer quills than the short 3-inch pieces sold in most jars, so use three or four of those. Cloves are aggressive, and even 2 tablespoons in a large pot of water is already assertive.
- Boiled leg of lambCover a 5-6 lb bone-in leg with cold water, add the spices and a good spoonful of salt, bring to a bare simmer and hold it there. A rolling boil toughens the meat and clouds the liquid.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockA simmered leg runs roughly 15-20 minutes per pound, but go by an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part away from the bone: 145F for pink, 160F if you want it firmly cooked for slicing cold.
- The point is cold lambThe spices perfume the meat as it cools, so let the leg cool in its cooking liquid rather than lifting it out hot. This also keeps it from drying, which is the usual fault of cold boiled lamb.
- The basting liquid for roastingSimmer the cloves and cinnamon in about 2 cups of water for 15 minutes, covered, before you start basting; a quick boil extracts very little. Strain it, or the cloves will scorch on the roasting pan.
- Roasting temperaturesThe recipe gives no oven temperature at all. In a modern oven, sear at 450F for 20 minutes, drop to 325F, and baste with the spiced water every 20 minutes to 130-135F for medium-rare.
- Salt is missingNeither method here mentions seasoning, which cooks of the period may well have taken for granted. Salt the boiling water generously and rub a roast with salt and pepper before it goes in; clove and cinnamon alone read as sweet rather than savoury.
- YieldA 5-6 lb bone-in leg serves eight hot, or gives ample cold slices for a party of six with leftovers, which is what this method is really aimed at.
Clove and cinnamon with mutton and lamb is much older than this book: spiced boiled and potted meats run straight back through eighteenth-century English cookery to the medieval kitchen, where warm spices were used with roasts and stews as a matter of course rather than reserved for sweets. What distinguishes this particular note is its purpose. The dish being improved is cold lamb, and cold sliced joints were often served at supper, at the Sunday-evening meal and in the picnic basket in households that cooked a large piece of meat once and ate on it for days. A boiled leg sliced cleanly when cold. The complaint the recipe answers is the one every such household knew: cold boiled lamb is dull. Spicing the pot liquor costs nothing and solves it, which is exactly the sort of economy these compilations were assembled to pass along.