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Roast Lamb
A leg of lamb is usually sent from market wrapped in caul; remove caul, wipe meat, sprinkle with salt and pepper, place on rack in dripping-pan, and dredge meat and bottom of pan with flour. Place in hot oven, and baste as soon as flour in pan is brown, and every fifteen minutes afterwards until meat is done, which will take about one and threefourths hours. It may be necessary to put a small quantity of water in pan while meat is cooking. Leg of lamb may be boned and stuffed for roasting. See Stuffing, under Braised Mutton.
Make gravy, following directions for Roast Beef Gravy on page 202, or serve with Currant Jelly Sauce.
To Carve a Leg of Lamb. Cut in thin slices across grain of meat to the bone, beginning at top of the leg.
A straightforward dredge-and-baste roast from Fannie Farmer's kitchen, written for cooks who judged doneness by the clock rather than a thermometer. A few translations bring it up to date.
- CaulThe lacy fatty membrane from the abdominal cavity of a pig or sheep, used here as a wrapper for the leg on its way from market; the recipe does not say why, though it would have protected the surface. It is rarely offered by retail butchers now; skip that step and simply pat the meat dry. If you want the same effect, caul fat can sometimes be ordered from a whole-animal butcher and tied on yourself.
- "Hot oven"The book works by oven description, not degrees; a hot oven is conventionally read today as somewhere around 425-450F. The point of the initial hard heat is to set the flour crust, and one common modern approach is to start high for 15-20 minutes and then drop to about 350F.
- Timing versus temperatureThe recipe gives a clock time only, with no weight stated; an hour and three-quarters in a hot oven suits a leg of roughly 5-6 lb. Use an instant-read thermometer in the thickest part away from the bone: 130-135F for medium-rare, 145F for medium. If the leg is boned and stuffed, take the centre of the stuffing to 165F.
- The dredge is the pointFlouring both the meat and the bottom of the pan is not decoration. The pan flour toasts in the drippings and becomes the roux for the gravy, which is why she tells you to start basting only once it has browned. Let it go pale blond at least, or the gravy tastes raw and pasty.
- Basting and the waterEvery fifteen minutes is more attention than a modern lean leg needs, and each door-opening costs heat. Baste two or three times. Add water to the pan only if the flour threatens to scorch, a tablespoon or two at a time.
- RestingThe original says nothing about it. Rest the leg 15-20 minutes under loose foil before carving, or the juices run out onto the board rather than staying in the thin slices she asks for.
- YieldA bone-in leg of 5-6 lb serves six to eight, with enough left for cold lamb the next day; the book does carry a number of recipes for cold and re-heated meat.
- Currant jelly sauceThe book gives its own recipe for this under sauces; in general terms it is a red currant jelly sauce. Redcurrant jelly is still sold in most supermarkets. Mint jelly is usually described as a later American accompaniment rather than the one intended here.
Fannie Merritt Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1896) was written for a city where lamb still arrived from the butcher dressed in caul fat and where roasting meant a coal or gas range whose heat you learned to read by hand. The instruction to dredge the meat and the pan with flour is an older English practice carried into American kitchens: the flour browns in the fat and thickens the gravy in place, which is why her gravy directions and her roast are two halves of one operation. Lamb and mutton occupy a substantial section of the book because both were common in Boston markets at the time, mutton being the meat of the older animal and considerably stronger in flavor; American taste shifted decisively toward young lamb over the following half century, and mutton has all but disappeared from retail here. The carving note, appended almost as an afterthought, reflects the book's audience of home cooks who were also expected to preside at the table.