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Saddle of Mutton
Remove the ends of the ribs and roll the flank under before cooking. Place it on the platter with the tail end at the left. Put the fork in firmly near the centre, and carve down to the ribs in long slices, parallel with the backbone, and the whole length. Slip the knife under and separate the slices from the ribs; do the same on the other side of the back. Divide the slices if very long. Cut the crisp fat from the sides in slanting slices. Turn partly over and remove the choice bit of tenderloin and kidney fat under the ribs. Carving a saddle of mutton in this way is really cutting with the grain of the meat, but it is the method adopted by the best authorities. It is only the choicest quality of mutton, and that which has been kept long enough to be very tender, that is prepared for cooking in this way. The fibres are not so tough as those of beef; there is no perceptible difference in the tenderness of the meat when cut in this manner, and there is an advantage in obtaining slices which are longer, and yet as thin as those from cutting across the grain.
One joint, one method, and an argument. The page knows it is breaking the rule about cutting across the grain and spends half its length defending itself.
- What a saddle isBoth loins still joined by the backbone, in one undivided piece, taken from behind the ribs to the hip. No butcher has one standing ready; it is ordered, and the ends of the ribs are removed and the thin flank rolled under and skewered before it goes near the oven.
- Cutting with the grain, deliberatelyThe page carves in long slices parallel to the backbone, admits that this is with the grain, and argues that mutton fibres are not as tough as beef’s, so nothing is lost in tenderness and you gain slices that are longer and just as thin. It is a real judgement about a real joint, and it still holds on a saddle of lamb.
- “Kept long enough to be very tender”The page says only the choicest mutton, hung long enough, is cooked this way. Hanging is what made the method defensible. What a butcher sells as a lamb saddle today is a young animal, dressed and chilled quickly, and it is a different proposition from the joint this instruction was written for.
- Take the undersideTurn the joint partly over and remove the fillets and the kidney fat from beneath the ribs. On a modern saddle the butcher may have taken both; ask for them left on, because the fillets are the tenderest meat on the animal and they are easy to forget under there.
- Fat as a helpingThe crisp fat is cut from the sides in slanting slices and served as a portion in its own right. That is the part of this page a modern table has lost completely, and it was not an afterthought — it was carved separately because people asked for it.
A saddle is an undivided joint for a full table, sent up whole when a household wanted to show what its butcher and its larder could do. The appeal in the middle of the page — that this is the method adopted by the best authorities — is the revealing phrase. Carving had authorities. A host who cut against them could be corrected across his own table by a guest who had read a different book, which is precisely why this page exists and why it argues instead of merely instructing.