No. 1627

Leg of Mutton a la Roederer

Gigot de Mouton a la Roederer

Prepare and cook a leg of mutton on the spit, reserve carefully the dripping pan stock; half an hour before serving blanch half a pound of small macaroni for ten minutes, drain, and lay it in the dripping pan under the meat. Prick the leg with a trussing needle to let its blood fall on the macaroni. When the leg is cooked, drain and dress on a vegetable dish layers of the macaroni alternated with grated parmesan, and so on until finished; pour some clear gravy (No. 404) over into which a little tomato puree (No. 730) has been added. Dress the meat, garnish the handles with a frill (No. 10) and serve a little clear gravy separately.

← No. 1626 Leg of Mutton a la Reglain Mutton No. 1628 Boiled Leg of Mutton, Granville →

For the Modern Kitchen

A spit-roast leg with macaroni set in the dripping pan to soak up the fat and juices as the meat cooks. Everything hinges on that pan: get the macaroni positioned to catch the drippings and the dish works in any oven.

The hinge: the dripping panRanhofer wants the pasta directly beneath the turning joint, absorbing fat and juices for the last half hour. Without a spit, set the leg on a rack over a shallow roasting pan and put the blanched macaroni in the pan under it for the final 30 minutes, stirring once so the top layer does not dry out.
"Let its blood fall"Pricking with a trussing needle releases the pink juices, not blood — the meat is already largely cooked at that point. This is what colours and seasons the macaroni. A few deep punctures with a skewer do the same job.
MuttonMutton means sheep over a year old, stronger in flavour and firmer than lamb. Butchers who sell it are rare in the US; a 5–6 lb bone-in leg of lamb is the usual substitute and will cook faster than the original intends.
Roasting time and temperatureA spit-roasted leg was worked in front of or over a strong fire and basted continuously. In an oven, 425°F for the first 20 minutes, then 325°F to finish, works out to roughly 15 minutes per pound for lamb at medium-rare (130–135°F at the thickest part, away from bone). Mutton of the same weight wants longer.
The macaroniHalf a pound is 8 oz dry. "Small macaroni" probably means a small or narrow cut; elbows or ditalini are a reasonable stand-in. The ten-minute blanch was meant to leave the pasta short of done so it could finish in the drippings; modern small macaroni cooks faster, so a shorter blanch will be needed to get the same result.
Cross-referenced numbersNo. 404 is Ranhofer's clear gravy, a reduced brown stock rather than a thickened pan sauce; No. 730 is tomato purée. A good reduced veal or lamb stock stands in for the first, and plain unseasoned tomato purée for the second — use it sparingly, it is there for colour and edge, not to make a tomato sauce.
FrillsNo. 10 is the paper cuff tied round the exposed shank bone for carving. Purely presentational and easily skipped.
YieldA leg of this size serves roughly six to eight, with the macaroni sent to table as its own dish alongside.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the mutton chapter runs to dozens of variations on the same joint — a measure of how central roast mutton still was to a grand American menu at the end of the century. Who or what the name à la Roederer honours is not recorded in the book, and no reliable attribution survives. The macaroni is the interesting part: pasta enriched with meat drippings and layered with parmesan was an Italian idea that had been thoroughly absorbed into French professional cooking by Ranhofer's day, and setting it in the dripping pan is an old spit-roasting economy — the same logic that put Yorkshire pudding under the English beef.