Home › The Principles of Cookery › Lamb, Roll Of
Lamb, Roll Of
Take three pounds of lean lamb, and mince it very finely with a pound of fat bacon. Mix with it a tea-spoonful of white pepper, the grated rind of a lemon, the eighth of a nutmeg, grated, a finely-minced shallot, half a tea-spoonful of powdered thyme, and salt according to taste. The quantity of salt will depend upon the condition of the bacon. When thoroughly mixed, roll the seasoned meat into a neat shape, something like a roly-poly pudding; cover it with a thick fold of buttered paper, and place over this a coarse crust made of flour and water. Put it in a moderate oven, and when cooked enough, remove the paste and paper, and serve the roll of lamb on a hot dish, with tomato or cucumber sauce round it, and green peas, spinach, or asparagus as an accompaniment. Time, two hours to bake. Probable cost, 3s. 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A forcemeat roll baked inside a sacrificial flour-and-water crust — an old way of keeping a lean minced meat moist before foil existed. The method works, but a few things need translating.
- The crust is not foodThe "coarse crust made of flour and water" is the kind of paste often called a huff paste, a disposable jacket that seals in steam and shields the meat. Roughly 2 parts flour to 1 part water by weight, rolled about 1/4 inch thick, pressed tight around the buttered paper. The recipe has you remove it before serving, so do not season it.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperatures; a moderate oven is usually read as about 325-350F/165-175C. Two hours at that heat should suit a 4 lb roll inside a crust: the paste insulates heavily, so the meat cooks much more gently than a bare loaf would.
- Judge it by temperatureMinced lamb and bacon should reach 160F/71C at the centre. Break the crust at the two-hour mark and probe rather than trusting the clock, since the roll's thickness matters more than its weight.
- Buttered paperParchment, well buttered, wrapped in two or three layers. The recipe asks for "a thick fold", so use more of it than seems necessary.
- Mince and baconAsk for shoulder or leg and mince it finely, as the recipe directs, or grind it yourself; a pound of fat bacon to three pounds of lean lamb makes a quarter of the mixture fatty bacon, and that is what keeps the roll from being dry. Use unsmoked streaky or pork back fat if you want the lamb to taste of lamb rather than of bacon.
- SaltThe warning about "the condition of the bacon" is real. Commercial bacon is wet-cured and salty; start at 1 1/2 teaspoons of fine salt for the four pounds of meat, fry a teaspoonful of the mix, taste, and adjust before rolling.
- Shaping"Something like a roly-poly pudding" means a cylinder about 3 inches thick. Compact it firmly so there are no air pockets, which otherwise fill with steam and split the roll.
- YieldFive or six as written. Served cold in slices the next day it stretches further, and the texture firms up usefully.
Baking meat inside a rough flour-and-water paste is a very old English kitchen economy — the same trick as the "huff paste" used for hams and for game — and it survived into the late nineteenth century because it did the job that foil and lidded roasting tins do now: trapped moisture and stopped a lean surface from scorching in an uneven coal-fired oven. The roll is really a lesson in forcemeat, showing how lean meat, a quarter of its bulk in fat bacon, and a short list of dry seasonings can be turned into something that slices. The seasoning — lemon rind, nutmeg, shallot, thyme, white pepper — is the standard Victorian forcemeat register, closer to a French pâté de campagne than to a modern meatloaf, and the cost note of 3s. 6d. is a reminder that the book was written for households keeping accounts as carefully as recipes.