Home › Lamb And Mutton › Crown of Lamb
Crown of Lamb
Select parts from two loins containing ribs, scrape flesh from bone between ribs, as far as lean meat, and trim off backbone. Shape each piece in a semicircle, having ribs outside, and sew pieces together to form a crown. Trim ends of bones evenly, care being taken that they are not left too long, and wrap each bone in a thin strip of fat salt pork or insert in cubes of fat salt pork to prevent bone from burning; then cover with buttered paper. Roast one and one-fourth hours.
Remove pork from bones before serving, and fill centre with Purée of Chestnuts.
This is a crown roast, built from two racks of lamb sewn into a circle. The construction is straightforward; the only part of the original that modern cooks should ignore outright is the roasting time.
- The hinge: cook to temperature, not to the clockAn hour and a quarter will take a crown of lamb well past grey. Roast at 400F and pull it when a thermometer in the thickest meat between the bones reads 130-135F for medium rare, which on two racks usually falls between 35 and 50 minutes. Rest it 15 minutes before carving.
- "Parts from two loins containing ribs"Ask for two racks of lamb, 7-8 ribs each, chine bone removed and frenched. A butcher will french and tie the crown for you in a few minutes, which saves the scraping and the sewing described here.
- Buttered paperParchment cut to shape, or a loose foil tent over the tips, does the same job. Take it off for the last 10 minutes if you want colour on the fat cap.
- Fat salt pork on the bonesSalt pork was the period's disposable bone cap. Small squares of foil crimped over each tip work as well and come off cleanly; the pork does add a little flavour to the tips if you have it.
- Roasting positionSet the crown on a rack in a shallow pan, bones up, and stand it so it does not lean. A ball of foil in the centre supports the ribs; the chestnut purée goes in only at the table, never during roasting.
- Pur extPuree of chestnuts -- Fannie Farmer's Puree of Chestnuts is elsewhere in the book; any chestnut puree, or a stuffing of chestnuts, breadcrumbs and butter, suits. Cook it separately and spoon it in hot.
- YieldTwo frenched racks give 14-16 ribs, which serves 7 to 8 at two ribs each. Carve down between the bones at the table.
The crown roast is a display piece of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: two racks of lamb bent rib-side out and stitched into a ring, a shape that makes most sense when there is a dining room to carry it into. Recipes of this sort belong to the era of the set dinner, when a joint was expected to arrive whole and be carved in front of the company. Fannie Farmer places it in the Lamb and Mutton chapter alongside much plainer family cookery, which the Boston Cooking School also taught. The salt pork caps and buttered paper are the period's practical answer to a problem that has not changed: exposed frenched bones scorch long before the meat is done. Chestnut puree was one of the standard fillings for the centre, chestnuts being readily available in American markets; the blight of the early twentieth century went on to destroy most of the native crop over the following decades.