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Shoulder of Mutton or Veal
Place it on the platter with the thickest part up. From the thickest part cut thin slices, slanting down to the knuckle; then make several cuts across to the larger end, and remove these slices from the shoulder-blade. Separate the blade at the shoulder-joint, and remove it. Cut the meat under the blade in perpendicular slices.
Any part of the forequarter of mutton is more tender and palatable, and more easily carved, if before cooking it be boned and stuffed. Or it may be boned, rolled, and corned.
A short, dense page on one joint: where to cut, in what order, and what to do with the meat hidden under the shoulder-blade. The last two sentences are the ones a modern cook will act on.
- The blade is the whole problemA shoulder is a flat bone buried in a wedge of meat, and the method follows from that. Thin slices from the thickest part slanting down to the knuckle, then cuts across to lift those slices off the blade, then the blade out, then the meat underneath cut in vertical slices. Stop before the last step and a good deal of the joint stays on the platter.
- Bone it insteadThe page’s own conclusion is that any part of the forequarter is more tender, more palatable and easier to carve if it is boned and stuffed before cooking. That is still true, and a butcher will do it. Ask for the shoulder boned and rolled and the carving problem leaves with the bone.
- Corned means saltedBoned, rolled and corned means rubbed and packed with coarse salt, the corns of salt the word refers to, for some days before cooking. It has nothing to do with tinned beef. A few days in a dry cure transforms a shoulder of mutton, and this is the page’s quietest good idea.
- Mutton wants timeA shoulder of mutton is tougher and far stronger in flavour than lamb, and the page’s remark that it is more palatable boned and stuffed is a hint that it was not reliably good. Cook mutton or hogget shoulder long and low until it pulls apart. Lamb shoulder treated the same way will not disappoint you either.
- Thickest part upThe joint goes on the platter thick side up and the carver works from the thick end down towards the knuckle. All the instructions assume that orientation, and the slices come out wrong if the joint is laid the other way about.
The shoulder was the cheap end, and this page treats it as a problem to be managed rather than a prize to be shown off. The advice to bone it, or to bone and roll and salt it, is household economy: make a second-rate joint behave, and make it easier on whoever has to divide it in front of company. That the chapter heading reads mutton or veal throughout is the other half of the same thrift. The two meats were nothing alike on the tongue, but they came off the carcass the same shape, and a book like this is organised by shape.