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To Roast Lamb
The hind quarter is the nicest piece for roasting. Drop it in a pot of boiling water; boil half an hour, put it in a pan, dredge it with lard, pepper, flour, a little salt; skim the top of the water in which it is boiled, and pour over it; as soon as the gravy accumulates in the pan keep it basted frequently to prevent it from being hard and dry. Lamb should be cooked done to be good.--Mrs. P. W.
A two-stage method: the leg is parboiled, then finished in the oven with a lard-and-flour crust. The original assumes a cook who knows her own fire, so the two things it never states are the oven temperature and the roasting time.
- What the cut isA "hind quarter" of lamb is the whole leg with the loin and often the flank attached, easily 8-10 lb on a modern animal. A bone-in leg of 5-7 lb behaves the same way and fits a domestic pot and pan.
- No oven temperature givenThe recipe gives none, and does not state whether the pan went into an oven or before the fire. If finishing in a modern oven, 400F for the first 20 minutes to set the flour and lard crust, then 350F to finish, is a workable modern reading.
- The half-hour boilThis is a par-cook, not a cure. It firms the outside and gives the flour something to cling to, and it produces the fatty skimmings used as the first basting liquid. Drop the meat into water already at a rolling boil, as written, or it will leach.
- Dredging with lardRub the hot, damp surface with softened lard or a neutral solid fat, then dust with seasoned flour. The flour absorbs the fat and browns into a crust; butter will burn before it gets there.
- "Skim the top of the water"The fat and scum rising in the boiling pot were poured over the joint as the initial basting liquid. Skim clear fat only and leave the grey protein scum behind; it tastes of nothing good.
- "Cooked done to be good"The instruction is to take the leg well past pink. Follow it and the leg will read 165-170F at the thickest point, where a modern cook would more often pull a leg at 130-135F for medium-rare. The parboil-and-baste method survives either way, but the basting matters much more if you take it to the older doneness.
- Basting rhythmThe recipe says only "frequently"; every 15 minutes or so once liquid collects. The dry warning is real: a parboiled leg has already lost surface moisture and will go leathery if left alone in the pan.
- Yield and servingA 6 lb bone-in leg feeds eight to ten. The pan juices, thickened by the dredging flour that washes off, make the gravy without further work. Mint sauce or currant jelly is the period accompaniment.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, is a collection of contributed receipts, and the initialled attribution here -- "Mrs. P. W." -- is how the book credits its many Virginia and Kentucky housewives. Parboiling a joint before roasting is often said to have suited kitchens working over open fires or in wood-fired ovens with unreliable heat: the boil guaranteed the interior was cooked through while the oven or spit did the browning, leaving the cook less time to nurse an unpredictable fire. The lard-and-flour dredge is the same logic as a pastry crust on a raised pie, a sacrificial layer that browns and holds moisture in. The insistence that lamb be "cooked done" reflects both period taste and the general nineteenth-century suspicion of underdone meat of any kind.