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Roast Crown of Lamb, or Mutton
Have your butcher pick out two loins containing ribs and have him arrange the "Crown" for you by scraping the meat from the bone between the ribs, as far as the lean portion, and trim off the backbone. Shape the two pieces so that they will meet in a circle or "Crown" having ribs outside. The two pieces forming this circle should be sewn firmly together at the ends. Ends of projecting bone must be trimmed evenly and not left too long. To prevent end of bones from charring while roasting, cap each one with a cube of fat salt pork covered with a twist of oiled paper-these to be removed with the cubes of salt pork before serving. Dissolve a teaspoon of salt in a half cup of water and pour over the roast when in the pan. Roast for about one hour. Serve on platter, border with green peas and fill the center of the "Crown" with mashed potatoes.
The recipe assumes a butcher who will french and tie the crown for you, and a cook who knows her own oven well enough not to need a temperature. Both assumptions need filling in.
- The hinge: order it in advanceTwo matched racks, frenched and sewn or tied into a circle, is still a butcher's job and still worth asking for two or three days ahead. Each rack should have 7 to 8 ribs, giving a crown of 14 to 16 chops that serves 6 to 8.
- Give the oven a numberNo temperature appears here, which is usual in books of this period, when ovens were often judged without a thermometer. Sear at 450F for 15 minutes, then drop to 325-350F for the balance; the hour stated is plausible for a lamb crown, less for a small one.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockLamb rib is lean and unforgiving. Take it out at 125-130F in the thickest part of the eye for medium-rare, 135F for medium, and rest 15 minutes before cutting the strings. Mutton, being older, is generally cooked further, which may be why a single flat hour was thought to cover either.
- Salt pork capsThe pork cubes and oiled paper are a working solution to charring bone tips, and they do baste the ends as they render. Foil caps do the same job; the paper frills sold for the purpose go on after roasting, never in the oven.
- The salted water in the panA half cup of water with a teaspoon of salt keeps drippings from scorching and creates a little steam early on. Top it up if it dries; do not let the pan go black, as those drippings are the gravy.
- Do not roast with the center filledFill the crown only at the table. Anything packed inside during roasting insulates the meat, slows the interior, and comes out greasy. Mashed potatoes and peas are cooked separately and spooned in at the last moment.
- Mutton is a different animalMutton, meat from a mature sheep (definitions vary, usually over a year old), is rarely sold in the United States now. What a modern butcher sells as lamb is likely to be young and mild, and may cook faster than the recipe expects.
The crown roast is a butcher's set piece rather than a cook's, and it belongs to the period when a household ordered meat by conversation and expected the shop to do the shaping. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued its cook book to broadly the same audience it sold sewing patterns to: women running middle-class households with some help but no professional kitchen. A crown of lamb carves and presents well at table. That the recipe offers lamb or mutton interchangeably suits its date; mutton was still ordinary market meat in the United States in the early twentieth century and had largely vanished from American butchers by mid-century. The frilled paper caps that now decorate the bone ends serve as ornament where the salt-pork-and-oiled-paper dodge described here was practical, though a direct line of descent between the two is not documented.