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Lamb, Saddle Of
A saddle of lamb is an elegant and excellent joint for a small party. Cover it with buttered paper, and lay it down to a clear fire. Baste it well, and when nearly cooked enough, remove the paper, dredge a little flour over the meat, and baste it again until it is nicely browned. Mint sauce should be sent to table with it, and green peas, spinach, cauliflowers, or potatoes are very suitable as accompaniments. Time to roast, about two hours or more, according to the size of the joint. Sufficient for eight or nine persons. Probable cost, 1s. per pound.
A saddle is the whole loin section, both sides still joined along the backbone — a joint written for a spit and an open fire, which is the main thing that has to be translated.
- What the joint isA saddle is the unsplit double loin, cut from behind the last rib to the hip, usually 5–7 lb with the flaps left on to be skewered underneath. Butchers rarely have one on display; it needs ordering, and the chine bone should be sawn through so the joint can be carved in long strips parallel to the backbone.
- Fire to oven"Lay it down to a clear fire" means a spit before a bright, smokeless bed of coals, with the meat radiating heat from one side and turning constantly. In an oven, start at 425F for 20 minutes to set the fat, then drop to 350F for the remainder.
- The two-hour timingTwo hours or more at oven temperatures will take a saddle well past pink, and Victorian taste generally ran to lamb and mutton cooked well through. If you want it pink, cook to internal temperature instead: 130–135F at the thickest part of the loin, away from bone, which for a 6 lb saddle is likely to be somewhere around 75–90 minutes.
- Buttered paperThe paper is a shield against scorching radiant heat, the ancestor of a foil tent. Buttered parchment or foil laid loosely over the top does the same work in an oven; take it off towards the end, as the recipe directs, so the meat can brown.
- Dredging and frothingThe flour dredge followed by a final basting is the old "frothing" — the flour absorbs fat and browns into a crisp, blistered surface. It works, but only if the joint goes back into real heat, so raise the oven to 425F for those last minutes.
- RestingThe original says nothing about resting. Rest a saddle 15–20 minutes under loose foil; a joint this thick will otherwise lose a great deal of juice at the first cut.
- Mint sauceThe English version is chopped mint steeped in boiling water with sugar, then sharpened with malt or cider vinegar — thin and sour, not the sweet jelly. Make it an hour ahead so the mint softens and the sugar dissolves.
- Cost and yieldOne shilling a pound is a late-Victorian price and tells you only that lamb was a middling luxury. Eight or nine servings is realistic for a 6 lb saddle carved properly, in long thin slices from either side of the backbone rather than in chops.
The saddle belongs to a class of large "company" joints — baron of beef, haunch of venison, saddle of mutton or lamb — that made sense when a household roasted before an open fire and expected to carve at the table. Cassell's calls it an "elegant and excellent joint for a small party"; Victorian dinner manuals devote diagrams to carving it. The pairing with mint sauce is old enough that its origins are traditional rather than documented, though vinegar-and-herb sauces with roast meat run back through medieval English cookery, and the sharpness suits the fat of a loin. The suggested accompaniments — peas, spinach, cauliflower — are all late spring and early summer vegetables, which fits the season when English lamb was at its best and a saddle was worth the outlay.