Home › The Principles of Cookery › Lamb, Fore-Quarter of, to Roast
Lamb, Fore-Quarter of, to Roast
This joint can scarcely be too fresh when dressed. Remove the scrag, the shankbone, and the chinebone, and crack the ribs half-way between the edge of the breast and the spine. Lay the meat down to a quick fire, and baste plentifully from the time of its being warmed through to that when it is ready for the table. Like all young meat, lamb should be very thoroughly cooked. About ten minutes before it is taken up dredge a little flour over it, and froth and brown it nicely. Serve the lamb with a cut paper ruffle on the shankbone, and send a little of its own gravy in the dish with it. Mint sauce and salad generally accompany this dish. Time, a fore-quarter of lamb, weighing ten pounds, will require from two hours to two hours and a half. The weather and the strength of the fire often cause a difference. Probable cost, 11d. per pound. Sufficient for eight or nine persons.
A fore-quarter is the whole front of the lamb — shoulder, ribs and breast in one piece, a joint no supermarket carries and most butchers will need notice to supply. Everything else here translates straightforwardly to an oven, with one large exception: the doneness.
- Butchering the jointThe scrag is the neck end, the chinebone the section of spine running along the ribs; both are removed so the joint sits flat and carves. Cracking the ribs halfway between breast edge and spine lets the piece flatten and makes it possible to cut between the bones later. A butcher will do all of this if asked.
- A more realistic jointFailing a true fore-quarter, buy a bone-in shoulder of 5-6 lb, which is the meatiest part of the same primal and behaves the same way. A breast can be roasted alongside it for the fat and crackle.
- "A quick fire"Meat was set in front of the fire on a spit or a bottle-jack, not enclosed. In an oven, start at 425F for 20-25 minutes to colour the outside, then drop to 350F for the remainder.
- "Very thoroughly cooked" — the point to reconsiderThe Victorian conviction that young meat must be cooked through has not survived. A shoulder is a hard-working muscle and does want long cooking, to about 190F internal, where the connective tissue breaks down and it pulls apart. Rack and rib meat from the same quarter is better taken to 130-140F and rested; the USDA's stated minimum for whole cuts of lamb is 145F with a three-minute rest.
- TimingTwo to two and a half hours for ten pounds is 12 to 15 minutes per pound, which suits an open fire radiating from one side. In a closed oven at 350F, work to a thermometer rather than the clock, and expect a 5-6 lb shoulder to want two and a half to three hours if you are taking it to the falling-apart stage.
- Basting and frothingBaste every 20 minutes with the fat in the pan. "Frothing" is the finish: a light dredge of flour over the hot fatty surface, then a return to high heat for the last ten minutes so it puffs and browns into a crust. It works, but only if the surface is genuinely greasy when the flour goes on.
- The gravy"A little of its own gravy" means the pan juices, defatted, not a thickened sauce. Tip off the fat, deglaze with a splash of stock or water, and season.
- Cost and yieldElevenpence a pound is consistent with Cassell's own period, the later nineteenth century, when lamb was a spring luxury. Eight or nine servings from ten pounds of bone-in fore-quarter is about right; a 5-6 lb shoulder feeds five or six.
Roasting a fore-quarter whole belongs to the era of the open hearth, when a large flat joint could be hung before the fire and turned, and when a household expected to carve at table for eight or nine. The cut itself is a compromise: shoulder, ribs and breast have different textures and ideally want different treatments, which is why butchers today break the quarter down rather than sell it entire. The paper ruffle on the shankbone was conventional presentation for a joint with a protruding bone, decorative and practical both, since it gave the carver something to grip. Mint sauce as the fixed accompaniment to lamb is an English habit generally traced back to the seventeenth century or earlier, and by Cassell's day it was so automatic that the book does not bother to explain it; the sharp vinegar cuts the fat of a joint that has been basted for two hours in its own drippings. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery gave a 'probable cost' for nearly every dish, sometimes per pound and sometimes for the dish entire, a reminder that it was written for households managing a budget as much as a kitchen.