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Roasted Leg of Lamb
To roast without stuffing, wipe with a damp cloth, dredge with salt, pepper, and flour. Put it in a dripping-pan with some of the kidney fat and just water enough to prevent its burning; put it in a hot oven, and as soon as the flour begins to brown, baste with the water in the pan. Bake from an hour to an hour and a quarter.
To stuff: remove the bone, wipe out the cavity and fill with a stuffing made of 1 cup stale bread crumbs and a quarter of a cup of melted butter, moistening more, if necessary, with hot water. Season with a half teaspoon of salt, pepper, thyme, and marjoram (or a teaspoonful of mixed sweet herbs). A few drops of onion juice may be added with good result. Fill the cavity, sew or skewer it together, and roast as above. Serve with mint sauce.
A straightforward oven roast in the old style, with the option of boning the leg and filling it with a plain herbed bread stuffing. The main thing to correct is the timing: an hour to an hour and a quarter suits a small leg or a rolled boned one, not a full modern leg.
- Oven temperature"A hot oven" here means 425-450F. Start there for the first 15-20 minutes to set the flour crust, then drop to 350F for the remainder so the outside does not blacken before the centre is done.
- Timing and donenessA bone-in leg today runs 5-8 lb and needs roughly 15-20 minutes per pound at 350F after the initial blast. Go by a thermometer in the thickest part away from the bone: 130-135F for pink, 145F for medium. The book's hour and a quarter would leave a modern leg raw at the centre.
- Kidney fatThe suet-like fat from around the kidney, which may have come to the cook along with the joint and was used here for basting. If you have none, a tablespoon or two of beef suet, lard or oil brushed over the meat serves the same purpose.
- The dripping-panA shallow roasting pan with the meat on a rack is the modern equivalent. Add water only a quarter-inch deep, and top it up as it evaporates; if the pan dries out, the drippings scorch and the gravy is spoiled.
- Dredging with flourThe flour is there to form a browned coating and to thicken the pan liquid into gravy. Pat the leg genuinely dry first or the flour will slide off in the pan.
- Boning for the stuffingAsk the butcher to tunnel-bone or butterfly the leg. If it is butterflied, spread the stuffing, roll and tie at 1-inch intervals rather than sewing; a rolled leg cooks faster than bone-in, so check the temperature at 45 minutes.
- Stuffing quantitiesOne cup of crumbs and a quarter cup of butter fills a small cavity only. For a 6-8 lb leg, double it. Stale bread means dry, day-old crumb, not fresh soft bread, which turns to paste.
- Onion juiceGrate a peeled onion on a fine grater and use the liquid that collects. It gives onion flavour without pieces that stay crunchy inside the stuffing.
- Mint sauceThe intended accompaniment is the English kind: chopped mint steeped in vinegar with a little sugar, sharp rather than sweet. It is a condiment, not a jelly glaze.
- Yield and restingA 6 lb bone-in leg serves about 6 to 8. Rest it 15-20 minutes under loose foil before carving so the juices set.
Roast leg of lamb with mint sauce is among the most English dishes in the American household canon, and by the time compilations like this one were assembled it had long been standard Sunday fare on both sides of the Atlantic. The dredging of flour over the joint is an older technique than the recipe itself, a survival from spit-roasting, where flour and fat built up a crust that held moisture in while the meat turned before the fire; the shallow dripping-pan is the direct descendant of the pan set beneath the spit to catch the fat. The boning-and-stuffing variant reflects the period's fondness for making a joint carve neatly and stretch further.