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Roast Leg of Mutton
Choose young and tender mutton. Take off the shank--wash it well; let it lie fifteen or twenty minutes in salt water to take the blood out. Rub with little salt and pepper well. Lay on a grate, which will go nicely in a baking-pan, over one pint boiling water; break the bones of the shank in the water, adding more pepper and salt. Set it in a very hot oven, and baste frequently to prevent it from being hard and dry. When it is of a light brown, cover with sheets of buttered paper. Place it on a dish; add minced parsley to the gravy, which should be brown. Cover the roast with grated brown cracker and garnish at intervals with chopped parsley; pour the gravy in the dish, not over it. Mutton should always be perfectly done.--Mrs. S. T.
A straightforward roast built around a water-bath gravy in the pan, with two period touches that need decoding: buttered paper and grated brown cracker. The instruction that shapes the result most is "baste frequently" — this is an open, wet-bottomed pan, and without basting the exterior dries before the interior is done.
- Mutton, and what to buy insteadMutton is sheep over about two years old, and it is rarely stocked in American markets; you may find it at halal butchers or by special order. A 5-7 lb bone-in leg of lamb behaves similarly but cooks faster and tastes much milder, so the parsley and pepper carry more of the flavor than they did here.
- "A very hot oven"Read that as roughly 450F. Start there for 20-25 minutes to color the surface, then drop to 325-350F for the remainder. The recipe itself does not lower the heat; it covers the joint with buttered paper once it has browned, which serves a comparable protective purpose.
- "Perfectly done"Mutton of this period was roasted right through, well past pink, which in modern terms works out around 170F, though no cook then was measuring it; that is why frequent basting was needed to keep it from going hard. A leg of lamb is at its best pulled at 130-135F for medium-rare, rested 15-20 minutes. They are simply different dishes.
- TimingNo time is given. Figure roughly 15 minutes per pound at 325-350F after the initial blast for medium-rare, and use a thermometer in the thickest part away from the bone rather than the clock.
- Buttered paperSheets of paper spread with butter were the period's foil. Buttered parchment laid loosely over the joint does the same job; foil works but traps more steam, so tent it rather than wrap it.
- Grated brown crackerHard water crackers, dried in the oven until well browned and then grated to crumbs — closest modern equivalent is coarse dry breadcrumbs toasted in a pan until deep gold. They are pressed on after roasting, purely for texture and looks.
- The shank and the pint of waterBreaking the shank bones into the pint of boiling water under the rack makes a quick stock that becomes the gravy. Keep an eye on it and top up with hot water if it threatens to dry out, or the drippings will scorch.
- Gravy under, not overPouring the gravy into the dish rather than over the meat keeps the cracker crumbs crisp. It is worth honoring; crumbs sauced from above turn to paste immediately.
- YieldA 5-7 lb bone-in leg serves 6-8, with enough left for cold slices the next day, which is how a joint this size was expected to be used.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housewives — hence the "Mrs. S. T." signature — belongs to a tradition of Southern community cookbooks in which each dish carries a household's authority rather than an author's. The roasting method described here is a transitional one: the joint sits on a grate above liquid inside a closed oven, a stove-era adaptation of the older practice of turning meat on a spit before an open fire with a dripping-pan beneath. Mutton was ordinary American eating in the 1870s, when sheep were kept as much for wool as for meat and older carcasses came to table as a matter of course; the taste for young lamb, and the near-disappearance of mutton from the market, belongs to the twentieth century. The salt-water soak "to take the blood out" was standard advice of the period for strong-flavored meats, and the crumb coating and parsley garnish reflect a general Anglo-American fashion for dressing a plain roast at the moment of serving.