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Lamb, Leg of, Stewed
Put a leg of lamb, weighing about five pounds, into a deep baking-pan with two turnips, a carrot, a leek, a clove of garlic, three tea-spoonfuls of salt, half a tea-spoonful of cayenne pepper, and as much water as will cover it. Put it in a moderate oven, and let it remain for an hour after it begins to simmer. At the end of that time, put with it a pint of young green peas, a sprig of mint, and a small lump of sugar, and let it stew half an hour longer. Serve it on a hot dish, with the vegetables round it, a little of the gravy poured over, and the rest in a tureen. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient for five or six persons.
An oven-braise rather than a stew in the stovetop sense: the leg sits in barely enough water to cover and comes out sliceable, with its own broth. Two things need adjusting — the vessel must be covered, and the peas should go in far later than the recipe says.
- Moderate ovenRead this as 325–350F. The liquid should never do more than a lazy simmer; a hard boil will squeeze the meat dry and cloud the broth.
- A deep baking-pan, coveredUse a lidded roasting pan or a large Dutch oven. The recipe does not say to cover the pan, but it calls for water enough to cover a 5 lb leg; uncovered in the oven that liquid will drop noticeably over the cooking time. Victorian baking-pans were deep, and covering a pan with an inverted second pan or sealing it with a flour-and-water paste was a known practice.
- Total timingThe instruction is an hour after it begins to simmer, which from cold water in the oven means a period of heating first, then an hour, then a further half hour. Figure roughly two to two and a half hours in all. Judge it by internal temperature rather than the clock: about 175-180F for meat that carves cleanly, longer if you want it falling apart.
- The peasHalf an hour will turn modern peas, fresh or frozen, to grey mush. A pint of shelled young peas needs five to eight minutes; frozen ones, three. Add them, the mint and the sugar at the very end and let the pot sit off the heat while you carve.
- CayenneHalf a teaspoon in a pot this size reads as background seasoning rather than heat. Victorian cayenne varied a good deal in strength and was often adulterated, so modern ground cayenne may well be sharper; start with less than the half teaspoon and correct at the end.
- Whole vegetablesThe turnips, carrot and leek are meant to be served around the meat, so leave them in large pieces rather than dicing them. Two turnips and one carrot for six people is thin by modern expectations; double them if the vegetables are the side dish.
- The gravySkim the fat before serving — lamb throws a great deal of it. The broth as written is unthickened and lightly salted; reducing a ladleful hard in a small pan gives something with enough body to pour over the meat, with the rest going to the tureen as directed.
- Yield and costFive or six servings is accurate. "Probable cost, 1s. per pound" is a period budgeting note and tells you nothing about the cooking.
Cassell's arranges its material alphabetically as a dictionary, so a single cut like a leg of lamb gets a run of consecutive entries, each a variation on handling rather than a distinct dish. Stewing a whole leg in just enough water, then serving the cooking liquid separately in a tureen, gave a nineteenth-century household two things from one fire: a joint to carve and a broth to use. The peas, mint and pinch of sugar added at the end are the standard English pairing with lamb, generally tied to the coincidence of spring lamb and the first garden peas arriving together; mint sauce and lamb are recorded together in English cookery well before Cassell's. The "probable cost" line at the foot of the entry is characteristic of the book's audience — mistresses of modest households pricing a dinner before ordering it from the butcher.