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Braised Leg of Mutton
1/8 teaspoon pepper 1/2 tablespoon Poultry Seasoning 1/4 cup boiling water Order a leg of mutton boned. Wipe, stuff, sew, and place in deep pan. Cook five minutes in one-fourth cup butter, a slice each of onion, carrot, and turnip cut in dice, one-half bay leaf, and a sprig each of thyme and parsley. Add three cups hot water, one and one-half teaspoons salt, and twelve peppercorns; pour over mutton. Cover closely, and cook slowly three hours, uncovering for the last halfhour. Remove from pan to hot platter. Brown three tablespoons butter, add four tablespoons flour, and stir until well browned; then pour on slowly the strained liquor; there should be one and three-fourths cups. 1 cup cracker crumbs 1/4 cup melted butter ¼ teaspoon salt
A straightforward braise, though the recipe assumes you know how to bone and stuff a leg and ends abruptly with the stuffing ingredients tacked on as an afterthought. The hinge is temperature: this needs a bare simmer for three hours, not a boil, or the leg tightens and dries before the connective tissue gives way.
- The stuffing list belongs at the startThe trailing "1 cup cracker crumbs, 1/4 cup melted butter, 14 teaspoon salt" is the stuffing, and the "14" is a typesetter's rendering of 1/4 teaspoon. Moisten the crumbs with the butter, season, add a little of the herb mixture or a spoonful of stock if it seems dry, and pack it into the boned cavity before sewing up with kitchen twine.
- MuttonMutton means an adult sheep — usually over a year old, often two or more — stronger, fattier, and tougher than lamb. Very little American retail meat is sold as mutton; halal and Middle Eastern butchers sometimes have it, otherwise order it. A boned leg of lamb substitutes directly but is tender much sooner, so check at two hours.
- "Cook slowly three hours"The recipe gives no temperature: a closely covered pan cooked gently is all that is specified. Keep the liquid at a lazy simmer with only occasional bubbles; a rolling boil will squeeze the meat.
- Uncovering at the endThe last half hour without the lid lets the exposed surface color and the liquid reduce. Baste once or twice in that period so the top does not dry out.
- The gravyBrowning three tablespoons butter with four tablespoons flour until well colored is a brown roux, and it takes longer than expected — five to eight minutes of steady stirring over moderate heat. Add the strained braising liquid gradually off the heat to avoid lumps; if you have more than the specified one and three-fourths cups, reduce it first or the gravy will be thin.
- DonenessModern practice would take it to about 195–200F internally, where the collagen has broken down and a fork twists free easily. Three hours is a guide, not a test.
- YieldA boned leg of mutton or lamb runs 4 to 6 lb and serves eight to ten, with the gravy and stuffing stretching it further. Let it rest ten minutes on the hot platter before carving across the grain.
Braising was a standard nineteenth-century answer to mutton, which by the time a sheep reached full size had muscle no roast could soften. Recipes of this type treat mutton and lamb as near-equivalents, a fair reflection of American markets then: sheep were kept for wool as much as meat, and older carcasses reached the butcher routinely. Cracker-crumb stuffing bound with melted butter was common in New England cookery of the period — commercial soda and common crackers were cheap and shelf-stable — and cracker crumbs turn up in fish, fowl, and forcemeat recipes alike. American taste shifted toward young lamb over the following half century, which is why the recipe's central ingredient is now the hardest part to obtain.