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Saddle of Mutton
This should be covered with paper, and carefully roasted or baked. Season with a little pepper and salt; garnish with horseradish.
A characteristically terse Virginia instruction that assumes the cook already knows how to handle a large joint. Everything that matters is in the two things it does say: cover it, and roast it carefully.
- What a saddle isThe saddle is both loins still joined at the backbone, cut from behind the ribs to the hip, usually 8-12 lb with the kidneys sometimes left in. Any butcher will need several days' notice; a bone-in loin roast or a whole leg behaves similarly if a true saddle is out of reach.
- Mutton, not lambMutton is generally sheep over a year old (some definitions reserve the word for animals over two), darker, firmer and considerably stronger in flavour than the lamb sold today. If you substitute lamb, expect a milder joint that cooks faster and renders less fat.
- The paper coveringNineteenth-century cooks tied buttered paper over the fat to keep it from scorching during a long roast, removing it near the end to brown. Buttered parchment does the same job; foil works but traps steam and softens the surface, so take it off for the last 20-30 minutes either way.
- Oven heatThe book gives no temperature. As a modern equivalent, start at 450F for 20 minutes to set the outside, then drop to 325-350F for the remainder. 'Carefully roasted' most likely means guarding against the fierce, uneven heat of a nineteenth-century range or hearth fire, which a modern oven largely solves for you.
- Timing by thermometerReckon roughly 12-15 minutes per pound after the initial blast, but go by internal temperature at the thickest part of the loin: 130-135F for rare, 140-145F for medium. Mutton is often preferred a shade more done than lamb because the fat needs to render.
- Resting and carvingRest 20 minutes under loose foil. A saddle is carved in long strips parallel to the backbone, not across it, then the strips are cut into portions.
- Seasoning"A little pepper and salt" is understated for a joint this size; salt it generously, ideally several hours or a day ahead so it penetrates.
- Yield and accompanimentA 10 lb saddle serves roughly 10-14. Horseradish is the garnish specified, without further description; currant jelly and pan gravy commonly accompany roast mutton in cookbooks of the period.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, records a table still oriented toward the English joint, and the saddle was among the grandest of them: an undivided cut that had to be roasted whole and so suited a large company and a large oven. Mutton was ordinary meat in Britain and something closer to an occasion in the American South, where sheep were fewer and pork ruled the smokehouse. The brevity of the entry is the point. Recipes of this kind read as memoranda for cooks who had roasted meat all their lives and needed reminding only of the finishing touches, which is why the horseradish garnish gets as many words as the cooking itself. Horseradish with beef and mutton is an English carryover, well established by the eighteenth century.