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Mutton, Haunch of, Roast
Unless this joint has been well hung it will be tough and insipid. A haunch of good Southdown mutton in fine, clear, frosty weather may be kept a month, but in damp weather it will require much attention on the part of the cook to keep it from getting tainted in half the time. The great point is to keep it dry, by dusting it first with flour, which should be rubbed off several times with a dry cloth, and again renewed. When to be cooked, skin the loin, wash, and wipe dry; then cover with white paper, or make a common paste of flour and water, and envelop the joint. Put it on the spit, or hang before a good, even, vigorous fire for the first half hour, basting it constantly with good meat-dripping. When within half an hour of being done, take off the paper, and brown slightly. Dredge the haunch with flour, and baste copiously with butter, but first pour the dripping from the pan; sprinkle a little salt over it, and send it to table finely frothed. Make a gravy with the dripping in the pan and a little boiling broth drawn from the trimmings, add salt and pepper, and put in a sauceboat. Serve currant jelly or currant-jelly sauce. Time, from ten to fifteen minutes per pound; well done, eighteen minutes. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient for ten or more persons.
The roasting method here is straightforward enough, but the recipe begins with a month of uncontrolled ambient hanging, and that first step is the whole reason the joint was thought worth eating. It cannot be reproduced in a modern house.
- The hanging is the unsafe partA haunch held for up to a month in a larder at whatever temperature the weather happened to supply is dry-aging without any measured temperature, humidity or airflow. Professional dry-aging runs in a narrow band near 1-3C with controlled humidity and moving air; a domestic pantry in "damp weather" sits squarely in the range where spoilage bacteria and moulds multiply on a moist surface. The book itself warns that in damp weather the joint will taint in half the time unless the cook works constantly to prevent it.
- Flour is not a preservativeThe recipe's stated aim in dusting with flour and rubbing it off is simply to keep the surface dry. Flour has no antimicrobial effect and does not compensate for temperature. If you want aged mutton or lamb, it should come from a butcher who ages it under controlled conditions.
- Judging taint by smell does not workThis recipe leaves the cook to judge by eye and nose whether the joint has gone. Surface spoilage organisms and the pathogens that matter are not the same thing, and a joint can be hazardous while still smelling only gamey.
- Southdown muttonSouthdown is a small, early-maturing English down breed. "Mutton" means sheep over about two years old, with darker, stronger meat than lamb; almost all supermarket meat sold today is lamb under twelve months, which is why the long hanging that mutton was thought to need has largely disappeared from cookery books.
- Spit roasting, not oven roasting"Put it on the spit, or hang before a good, even, vigorous fire" describes radiant roasting in front of an open fire with a dripping pan beneath, which is why constant basting is specified. The times given, ten to eighteen minutes per pound, belong to that method and to a joint of unknown starting temperature; they are not oven figures.
- The paste and the paperA flour-and-water paste or a sheet of paper shielded the outer fat from the fierce radiant heat until the last half hour, when it came off for colour. This is the same logic as a foil shield, not an enriched suet crust to be eaten.
- "Finely frothed"Frothing means dredging the hot joint with flour and basting it with butter so the surface blisters into a pale, crisp bloom just before it goes to the table. The dripping is poured off first so the flour catches on butter rather than swimming in fat.
- Scale and costA haunch is the leg with part of the loin attached, which is why the recipe begins by telling the cook to skin the loin; it is a large joint, hence "sufficient for ten or more persons." The "probable cost, 1s. per pound" is a Victorian retail price and is of historical interest only.
The haunch was the show joint of the English roasting tradition, carved at the table and served with currant jelly. Its long hanging reflects a period in which mutton, from a sheep of two years or more, was a staple meat of Britain and was thought to need weeks of hanging before it could rival beef; the advice to work with "fine, clear, frosty weather" is a reminder that the Victorian larder was governed by the season and not by a thermostat, since mechanical refrigeration reached domestic kitchens only well into the twentieth century. The Southdown, generally traced to Sussex flocks improved by John Ellman around the turn of the nineteenth century, was among the breeds most often named in cookery books of the period as a standard of quality. Mutton's decline in Britain over the following century, in favour of quicker-growing lamb, is why recipes like this one now read as instructions for a joint most readers have never handled.