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Broiled Mutton
After a leg of mutton has been washed and wiped dry, place in a cloth that has been dipped in boiling water. Roll it up, pin and tie securely; put in a pot of boiling water. Let it simmer several hours, removing the scum that rises when it first begins to boil. If a small leg of mutton, it will require a shorter time to cook than a large one. Just before it is done, add enough salt to season it properly, half an onion, and one heaping teaspoonful of black pepper. When this has properly seasoned the meat, take from the fire, unwrap and drain. Serve with drawn butter, adding capers or nasturtium seed, or if you have neither, use chopped sour pickle instead. Mutton should always be served with caper sauce, if possible.--Mrs. S. T.
The heading says broiled, but the method is a boiled leg of mutton wrapped in a scalded cloth — a nineteenth-century way of keeping the joint pale and the juices in. The cloth is the part most cooks skip, and the part that makes the difference.
- The clothUse unbleached muslin or a well-washed linen tea towel with no fabric softener residue, dipped in boiling water as the recipe directs, then rolled tight and tied with butcher's twine rather than pinned. It helps keep the surface from shredding and keeps scum off the meat; without it the flavour should be much the same, but the exterior is likely to be greyer and rougher.
- Mutton, and what to buy insteadMutton is sheep over about two years old, and it is rare in supermarkets. Halal and farm butchers still sell it; otherwise use hogget or a leg of lamb, which is milder and needs less time.
- TimingReckon roughly 25 minutes per pound plus 25 minutes for mutton — about two and a half hours for a 5 lb leg. "Several hours" suits a large old joint; a leg of lamb the same weight will be done nearer two hours.
- Simmer, do not boilHold the water at 180–190F, barely trembling. A rolling boil tightens the muscle fibres and gives you stringy meat and cloudy liquid, which is also why the scum is skimmed at the outset.
- Season earlier than toldSalt added "just before it is done" flavours mainly the surface. Salting the water at the start, along with the onion and pepper, will season the meat more deeply, though penetration into a large cloth-wrapped leg is limited either way.
- Drawn butterIn this period drawn butter is a thickened sauce — butter melted with a spoonful of flour and let down with a little of the cooking liquor or hot water — not clarified butter. Capers, pickled nasturtium seeds (the classic "poor man's caper") or chopped sour pickle all supply the same sharp counterpoint to the fat.
- Keep the brothThe cooking liquid is a good mutton stock once the fat is lifted from the top. Strain and chill it rather than pouring it away.
- YieldA 5 lb leg serves six to eight, with cold meat left for hash or a shepherd's pie.
Boiled leg of mutton with caper sauce was one of the fixed points of English and Anglo-American cookery for most of the nineteenth century, and its appearance in a Virginia collection of 1878 suggests how far the state's households still cooked in the British manner. The cloth wrapping is older still, related to the pudding cloth and to the boiled joints of eighteenth-century kitchens, where a single hanging pot did the work of an oven. Capers, imported and pricey, were the orthodox sauce; nasturtium seeds pickled in vinegar were the standard domestic substitute, generally called poor man's capers. Like most recipes in the book, this one arrives under a contributor's initials, Cabell Tyree, from a large body of contributing housekeepers, which is why the same dish can appear more than once with different hands behind it.