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Mutton, Roast Haunch of
INGREDIENTS. -Haunch of mutton, a little salt, flour. AVERAGE COST, 10d. per lb.
Let this joint hang as long as possible without becoming tainted, and while hanging dust flour over it, which keeps off the flies and prevents the air from getting to it. If not well hung, the joint when it comes to table will do credit neither to the butcher nor the cook, as it will not be tender. Wash the outside well, lest it should have a bad flavour from keeping; then flour it and put it down to a nice brisk fire, at some distance so that it may gradually warm through. Keep continually HAUNCH OF MUTTON. basting, and about ½ hour before it is served draw it nearer to the fire to get nicely brown. Sprinkle a little fine salt over the meat, pour off the dripping, add a little boiling water slightly salted, and strain this over the joint. Place a paper ruche on the bone, and send red-currant jelly and gravy in a tureen to table with it.
TIME. About 4 hours.
SEASONABLE. In best season from September to March.
This is spit-roasting written for an open fire, and almost everything that needs translating concerns heat: the joint is warmed slowly at a distance, then drawn close to brown. An oven does the same work in two stages.
- What a haunch isThe haunch is the leg together with the chump end of the loin, still on the bone — a large joint, often 10 lb or more, enough for a dozen at table. Butchers now generally break this into a separate leg and loin, so a full haunch is a special order and will not fit in a small oven.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is sheep over roughly two years old, darker and much stronger in flavour than lamb. It is sold mainly by halal butchers and specialist farm suppliers. A leg of lamb will stand in but is far milder and cooks faster, so treat the timing below as a maximum.
- The hanging is not a home jobDo not hang meat in a domestic kitchen or larder as directed. The instruction to wash the outside "lest it should have a bad flavour from keeping" describes surface spoilage that a cold cellar and constant handling once kept in check. Buy meat that has been dry-aged under refrigeration by the butcher, which gives the same tenderness the recipe is after.
- Oven equivalent of the brisk fireStart at 450F for 20 to 25 minutes to set the outside, then drop to 325F for the remainder. The original reverses this order because a spit browns at the end; in an oven the sear works better first.
- Time and donenessReckon about 15 minutes per pound at 325F after the initial blast, and go by a thermometer in the thickest part away from bone: 130-135F for pink, 145F if you want it more done. Four hours suits a very large haunch before a fire, not a 9 lb joint in a modern oven.
- Basting and flourThe first flour dusting is there to keep flies off while the joint hangs; the recipe flours it again before roasting, which helps the surface brown and can be left out in an oven. Basting an oven roast is optional; it does not keep the interior moist, though it helps colour. Rest the joint 20 to 30 minutes before carving.
- The gravyPour the fat off the roasting tin, add a little boiling salted water, and scrape up the browned residue — that is all the recipe means by gravy. Stock rather than water gives a better result, and a splash of the red-currant jelly in the pan is not out of keeping.
- The paper rucheA frilled paper cuff tied over the exposed bone, so the carver has something clean to grip. Purely presentational; baking parchment cut into a fringe does it.
A haunch was the grand roast of the English dining room, sent up whole with the bone dressed in paper and red-currant jelly alongside — the same accompaniment given to venison, whose name and treatment the mutton joint borrows. Mrs Beeton's insistence on long hanging reflects a period when mutton from mature sheep needed ageing to be tender, and when a cool larder was the only cold store a household had. The season she gives, September to March, follows the grazing year, sheep being killed once autumn grass had put fat on them. Mutton fell steeply out of British favour after the Second World War, when the trade shifted to fast-grown lamb, and the word survives now mostly in the phrase about lamb dressed as mutton and in the revival campaigns of the last twenty years.