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Roasted Leg of Mutton
Take a leg of mutton, wipe it dry, sprinkle it over with pepper and flour, chop off the knuckle bone, remove the thick skin, and trim the flank. Place in a roasting dish, add a little water and salt, put in the oven, and baste frequently. Allow about fifteen minutes for every pound if the oven is very quick, and twenty minutes if the oven is slow. When done, put it on a dish, pour the gravy round, and serve with some currant jelly on a separate dish. If the leg is too large for roasting, it can be divided, and the knuckle end either boiled, or the cut end covered with paste made of water and flour, and boiled.
Roasted Boned and Stuffed Leg of Mutton The principal difficulty in accomplishing this dish is the boning. This must be done with a very sharp knife. Commence on the under side of the joint, passing the knife under the skin until exactly over the bone; then cut down to it, pass the knife around close to the bone right up to the socket, remove the large bone of the thickest end of the leg, seeing the meat is clear of the bone, draw out the remaining bones, which will come away easily, and stuff the cavity with highly seasoned forcemeat. Fasten the knuckle end tightly over, replace the bone at the base of the joint and sew it in. Place in front of a clear fire, baste well until done, and serve with gravy. Roasted Leg of Mutton, Portuguese Style Take a medium-sized leg of mutton take out the shank bone, trim well and make an incision at the first joint. Season with a little salt and pepper, rub one-half ounce of butter over and roast for one hour in a pan, basting occasionally with the gravy and turning it once in a while. Remove from the oven, place on a hot dish and serve with three stuffed tomatoes and three timbales of cooked rice, straining the gravy over it or it may be garnished with red or white beans cooked in gravy.
Three related treatments of a leg of mutton, written for kitchens that had a range and an open fire and no thermometer. The main adjustments are the meat itself, the oven language, and the roasting times.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is sheep over about two years old — darker, firmer, and much stronger in flavour than the lamb sold in most markets. If you buy lamb instead, a bone-in leg runs 6–8 lb and will taste considerably milder; halal and Caribbean butchers are the likeliest source of true mutton.
- Oven temperaturesA "very quick" oven is usually glossed as roughly 425–450F and a "slow" oven roughly 300–325F, though period usage varied from book to book. The two roasting times given appear to be the same joint cooked hot and fast or low and slow, rather than two different results.
- The times run longFifteen minutes per pound at 450F takes a leg of lamb well past the pink stage the period expected — mutton was generally cooked through. Cook to an internal reading rather than the clock: 130–135F at the thickest part for medium-rare, 145F for medium, resting 20 minutes before carving.
- Pepper and flourThe flour dredge is there to brown and to thicken the pan juices into the gravy. Sprinkle it on lightly; a heavy coat will scorch at quick-oven heat.
- The water in the panA little water keeps drippings from burning and gives you a base for the gravy, but it steams the underside of the joint. A rack in the pan with half a cup of water below gives the same gravy and a better crust.
- Boning the stuffed versionThe tunnel-boning described — working from the underside, staying against the bone — is the whole difficulty, as Oscar says. A boning knife and a butcher who will do it for you are both legitimate. Once stuffed and sewn, treat the joint as a roast and take the stuffing to 165F, which for a meat-based forcemeat is the limiting temperature, not the lamb.
- "In front of a clear fire"Spit-roasting before an open fire, with a dripping pan beneath. A 325–350F oven, basting every 20 minutes, is the practical equivalent for the boned and stuffed leg, which needs gentler heat than a bare joint.
- The flour-and-water pasteA luting paste, not something to eat. Sealing the cut end of a divided leg before boiling keeps the meat from washing out its juices; it is peeled off and discarded.
- Timbales of rice and servingIn the Portuguese version, timbales are simply cooked rice pressed into small moulds or ramekins and turned out. A whole leg serves 8–10; the currant jelly served separately is the standard English accompaniment and functions as our mint jelly does.
Oscar Tschirky ran the Waldorf's dining rooms at a moment when American hotel cookery was still built on an English foundation, and roast leg of mutton with currant jelly is about as English as a menu item gets. Mutton was the ordinary meat of the nineteenth-century table on both sides of the Atlantic; the modern preference for young lamb, and the near-disappearance of mutton from American butcher shops, came later. The three versions here — plain roast, boned and stuffed, and "Portuguese style" with tomatoes, rice and beans — suggest something of how a hotel kitchen might stretch one cut across a menu, though the reasoning behind the choice is a matter of inference. The boning instructions are unusually detailed for a book of this kind, which suggests Oscar expected it to be read by cooks as well as by householders.