Home › The Principles of Cookery › Mutton, Leg of, with Garlic
Mutton, Leg of, with Garlic
The peculiar pungent taste of garlic is very little liked by the English, although we cannot but acknowledge that it adds to the variety of dishes that may at times prove acceptable. The following treatment will considerably soften the garlic's acridness and render it less objectionable, while at the same time retaining its characteristic flavour. Stuff under the skin of a leg of mutton near the shank three or four cloves of garlic that may have been boiled or not, according to taste, the water having been changed repeatedly to mellow their flavour. Roast the leg in the usual way. Divide the cloves from the bulbs of as many garlics as will be sufficient for the sauce, peel, and put them into water, boil for a few minutes, when throw the water off and replace it by more boiling water. Do this after several successive intervals of five minutes, always slightly salting the water. When the garlic has become sufficiently tender to pulp, drain off the water by pressing the bulbs, and add good gravy made from the roasting of the meat. When hot, serve the meat on the garlic. Time, a quarter of an hour to a pound; to boil garlic, half an hour. Probable cost of mutton, 1s. per pound.
A straightforward roast leg whose real subject is the garlic: repeated blanching in fresh salted water strips out the sulphur compounds and leaves a mild, sweet pulp that thickens the pan gravy. That repeated change of water is the hinge of the dish.
- The blanching, preciselyPeeled cloves go into boiling salted water, boil a few minutes, then the water is poured off and replaced with fresh boiling water, at roughly five-minute intervals, for about half an hour total -- so five or six changes. Each one removes more of the raw bite, and by the end the cloves crush to a paste under a fork.
- "As many garlics as will be sufficient"A "garlic" here is the whole bulb, not a clove. For a leg serving six to eight, three or four heads blanched down to pulp gives a sauce that tastes of garlic without dominating the meat.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is sheep over two years old, stronger and firmer; most butchers now sell lamb. A leg of lamb will cook faster and taste milder, so the mellowed garlic will register more strongly against it. Order mutton from a halal or specialist butcher if you want the balance the recipe assumes.
- Oven and timingThe original says only "roast in the usual way" and gives no temperature. A modern equivalent would be a hot start of about 425F for 20 minutes, then 350F for the rest. The recipe's quarter of an hour to the pound brings a 6 lb leg to roughly medium; check for 130-135F at the thickest part for pink, 145F for medium, resting 20 minutes before carving.
- Stuffing the shank endSlip a small knife under the skin near the shank and push whole cloves into the pockets. Raw cloves perfume the meat more sharply; blanched ones give a rounder, nuttier note. Set them deep enough that they do not scorch on the surface.
- The gravyPour off the roasting fat, deglaze the tin with stock or a little wine, and add that to the pressed garlic pulp. Do not boil the sauce hard after the pulp goes in, or the garlic turns flat and slightly bitter.
- ServingThe meat is set on the garlic sauce rather than the sauce spooned over, which keeps the crust dry. Yield is six to eight from a leg; the original gives no number.
- The price note"1s. per pound" is a late-Victorian shilling and tells you nothing useful about cost today; mutton was a familiar English joint, though at this price not a cheap one.
Cassell's opens with an apology for garlic, which says a good deal about the late-Victorian English table: garlic was firmly associated with French and southern European cooking and was widely treated as a sign of coarse or foreign food, while shallot and onion passed without comment. The technique offered here as a concession — repeated blanching in changed water — is an old and genuinely effective one, though the reason is less straightforward than it might seem: garlic's pungency comes from sulphur compounds formed when a clove is cut or crushed, and since these cloves are boiled whole and peeled, the mellowing probably owes as much to heat deactivating the enzyme as to anything carried away in the water. Lamb or mutton with garlic is of course standard practice around the Mediterranean, where the cloves are slivered and inserted into the flesh rather than tamed first; the interest of this version is that it arrives at something close to the sweet, spreadable pulp of slow-cooked garlic by an entirely different route, and presents it as a sauce in the English manner, under the joint rather than in it.