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Roast Lamb
A leg of lamb is usually sent from market wrapped in caul; remove caul, wipe meat, sprinkle with salt and pepper, place on rack in dripping-pan, and dredge meat and bottom of pan with flour. Place in hot oven, and baste as soon as flour in pan is brown, and every fifteen minutes afterwards until meat is done, which will take about one and three-fourths hours. It may be necessary to put a small quantity of water in pan while meat is cooking. Leg of lamb may be boned and stuffed for roasting. See Stuffing, under Braised Mutton. Make gravy, following directions for Roast Beef Gravy on page 202, or serve with Currant Jelly Sauce.
To Carve a Leg of Lamb. Cut in thin slices across grain of meat to the bone, beginning at top of the leg.
A plain roast built on the old flour-dredge method, which browns the pan drippings into the base of the gravy. Two things need translating: the caul wrapping, which no longer arrives on supermarket lamb, and the oven, which the book leaves unnumbered.
- CaulCaul is the lacy fat membrane from around the stomach, once used to wrap and protect a leg in transit. Modern lamb comes without it; skip straight to wiping the meat dry. If your butcher supplies caul, it can be left on for the first half of roasting and removed to let the surface brown.
- "Hot oven"The book gives no numbers; in this period the term generally meant somewhere in the region of 400-450F. A practical modern reading is to start hot, about 425-450F, for the first 15-20 minutes to set the crust and colour the dredged flour, then drop to 350F for the remainder.
- The flour dredgeThis is the hinge of the recipe. Flour on the meat and on the pan bottom toasts in the first minutes and becomes the thickening and colour for the gravy. Do not let it go past deep brown, and add the splash of water the recipe mentions the moment it looks like scorching.
- Timing and donenessThe recipe gives no weight; one and three-quarter hours would suit a bone-in leg of roughly 5-6 lb taken to the well-done point generally preferred at the time. Cook to internal temperature instead: 130-135F at the thickest part, away from the bone, for medium rare, which on a leg that size is closer to 1 to 1 1/4 hours. Rest 15-20 minutes before carving.
- BastingEvery fifteen minutes is more attention than the joint needs and costs oven heat each time the door opens. Two or three bastings over the roast is enough.
- Boned and stuffedA boned leg cooks unevenly unless it is tied into an even cylinder. If you stuff it, take the stuffing itself to 165F, which usually means the meat ends nearer medium than medium rare.
- Currant jelly sauceThe book's alternative to pan gravy: red currant jelly melted down, often with a little of the pan juice or a spoonful of port. It plays the role mint sauce does in the English tradition, cutting the fat with sweetness and acid.
- YieldA 5-6 lb bone-in leg serves six to eight generously, with enough left for cold slices.