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Queen Mary's Sauce, for Roast Mutton
Put a well-hung joint of mutton down to a clear fire and baste liberally with the contents of the dripping-tin. When it is three parts roasted, drain off the fat, and put a good-sized dish under the meat. Place in this an anchovy, boned and pounded, a small onion, finely chopped, and a little pepper; pour over it a wine-glassful of port and a wine-glassful of boiling water, and let the droppings of the meat fall into the liquor. Baste the meat with this sauce, and when it is done enough, serve on a hot dish, and pour the gravy under it. Sufficient for a joint weighing six or seven pounds.
This is a basting sauce built in the dripping pan rather than a sauce made separately, so the method matters more than the quantities. The original assumes a joint turning on a spit before an open fire; adapting it to an oven is straightforward but changes how you handle the fat.
- The hinge: drain the fat firstThe whole point is that the port, anchovy and onion sit in a clean dish and take only the meat juices from that point on, not the pooled fat. If you skip the draining you get a greasy, split gravy instead of a sharp one.
- A wine-glassfulIn late Victorian cookery books a wine-glass is reckoned at about 2 fl oz (60 ml), so roughly a quarter cup each of port and boiling water. Some books stretch it to 2.5 fl oz; the recipe is forgiving either way.
- Oven instead of a clear fireRoast the mutton at 325-350F rather than trying to reproduce a spit. Set the joint on a rack over a roasting tin so the juices fall clear, and pour the port mixture into the tin once you have poured off the fat.
- "Three parts roasted"Add the sauce when about three quarters of the cooking time has gone, which for a 6-7 lb bone-in leg means roughly the last half hour. Added much earlier and the port has time to over-reduce in the dish.
- Well-hung muttonMutton means an older sheep, usually reckoned at two years or more (one to two years is often called hogget), hung for a week or more; almost nothing sold as lamb today has that flavour or fat. A 6-7 lb bone-in leg of lamb works, but expect a milder result, and reduce the roasting time since lamb cooks faster.
- The anchovyOne or two oil-packed fillets from a tin, mashed to a paste, replaces the salted whole fish the original assumes. It dissolves entirely and reads as depth rather than fish; do not add salt until you have tasted the finished gravy.
- The portUse a ruby or basic tawny port. Anything sweet and fortified sold as "port-style" will push the sauce toward jam once it reduces in the tin.
- Finishing and yieldThere is no thickening, so the gravy stays thin and glossy; strain it if the onion has caught. A 6-7 lb joint serves eight to ten, and the sauce is scant by modern habits, so double the port and water if your table expects a jugful.
Anchovy in mutton gravy is an old English trick rather than an invention of any one cook: cookery books from the eighteenth century onward reach for anchovy, port or claret, and sometimes both, to give roast mutton the savour that plain dripping gravy lacks. It is an example of basting in the dripping-tin, a technique that made sense only while joints turned before an open fire and the tin sat beneath catching everything. The royal attribution is the sort of name Victorian publishers liked to attach to a dish and should be treated as traditional rather than documented; the book gives no source, and no particular Queen Mary can be tied to it. What the recipe does record reliably is a period assumption now largely lost, that mutton would be hung before roasting and that its own falling juices, not stock, were the body of the sauce.