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Mutton, Leg of, to Roast
Get a leg of about eight pounds, which has hung at least a week, weather allowing. During hot summer weather this joint gets quickly tainted. Rub it lightly with salt, and put it at once before a brisk sharp fire. Place it close to the fire for the first five minutes, then draw it farther back, and let it roast more slowly until done. Baste continually with a little good dripping until that from the joint begins to flow. When within twenty minutes of being done, dredge it with flour, and baste with butter or dripping; and when the froth rises serve on a hot dish. Make a gravy, pour off the fat, when, if the dripping-pan has been floured, any gravy will adhere to it. Add a little extract of meat to this, and a little boiling water, pepper, and salt. Pour the gravy round the meat, not over it. Time, fifteen minutes per pound, and fifteen minutes over. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient for eight or nine persons.
This is spit-and-open-fire roasting written for a coal range, and the whole method translates to an oven provided you keep the two-stage heat the original insists on.
- Fire to ovenThe "brisk sharp fire" close in for five minutes, then drawn back, is a sear followed by a gentler roast. In an oven you can approximate it with a short blast of high heat (around 450F) before dropping to a moderate 325F for the remainder, bearing in mind the original allows only five minutes at the fiercest heat.
- Timing and internal temperatureFifteen minutes per pound plus fifteen gives about 2 hours 15 minutes for an 8 lb leg, which by modern standards is closer to well done than medium. Go by a thermometer in the thickest part away from the bone: 130-135F for pink, 145F for medium -- these will be reached before the book's time is up. Rest 20 minutes before carving.
- Mutton is not lambMutton is sheep over about two years old, deeper in flavour and firmer. It is sold now mainly by specialist butchers and halal shops. A 6-8 lb leg of lamb behaves similarly but cooks a little faster and will already have been aged by the butcher.
- Hanging"Hung at least a week, weather allowing" describes a cold larder in a house without refrigeration, and the warning about hot summer weather is the reason. Buy meat already aged by the butcher and keep it refrigerated; do not attempt the hanging at home.
- DrippingDripping kept in a jar from earlier roasts; the recipe specifies only "good dripping," so beef or mutton fat both fit. Any neutral fat with a high smoke point works; dripping or clarified butter gives the flavour intended.
- Dredging and frothingThe flour dusted on 20 minutes from the end, then basted with fat, puffs and browns into a thin crust. That is the "froth" that signals the joint is ready to come out.
- Extract of meatA commercial concentrate of the Bovril and Liebig type. A teaspoon of beef or lamb stock concentrate, or a few tablespoons of strong stock, does the same job.
- The gravyPour off the fat but keep the browned flour and juices stuck to the pan, deglaze with boiling water, season, and pour it around the joint rather than over it so the floured surface stays crisp.
- YieldEight or nine servings, as stated; an 8 lb bone-in leg will feed that number.
Roast leg of mutton was the plain backbone of the English dinner table, and this is the joint every cook was expected to master. The insistence on hanging reflects a period when flavour and tenderness came from time in a cold larder rather than from a young animal; mutton from a mature sheep needed that ageing, and the aside about hot weather is a reminder of how seasonal meat-keeping still was in the later nineteenth century. The technique of dredging with flour and basting at the end, then "serving when the froth rises," is an older spit-roasting habit carried over to the range, and the price of a shilling a pound suggests a dish that was substantial and respectable rather than extravagant. Mutton fell out of British and American favour across the twentieth century as sheep were slaughtered younger and lamb became the default, which is why a joint that once needed no explanation now does.