No. 1652

Shoulder of Mutton with Potatoes

Epaule de Mouton aux Pommes de Terre

Bone two shoulders of mutton leaving on the handles only; suppress the sinews and skin from the inside meats, season and roll up lengthwise, sewing them well; put them into a small roastingpan lined with fragments of salt pork, and pour melted butter over, and cook them till three-quarters done in a moderate oven, turning them over and adding a little water, should the fat threaten to burn. A few minutes before serving season with salt. Cut into medium slices some raw peeled potatoes; mince three or four white onions, and fry them with butter in a sautoir over a slow fire; when they begin to brown add the potatoes, season and fry together for seven or eight minutes. Remove the meat to lay it on a long earthen dish capable of going in the oven, set the potatoes around, and baste them, also the meat with the strained fat from the pan; let the shoulders cook in a moderate oven for twenty-five minutes longer, then dress and garnish the handles with paper frills (No. 10) and lay the potatoes around them.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A two-stage roast from Ranhofer's kitchen: the rolled shoulders are taken most of the way in the oven, then finished on a serving dish with half-fried potatoes soaking up the strained drippings. The hinge is that second stage — the potatoes must be nearly cooked before they go around the meat, or they will still be raw when the mutton is ready.

"Handles"Ranhofer means the exposed shank bone, left protruding when the rest of the shoulder is boned out. It is there to be gripped for carving and to hold the paper frill. Ask a butcher to bone the shoulder but leave the shank in, or skip it and tie a plain boneless roll.
Mutton vs. lambMutton is sheep over about two years old — strong-flavoured, close-grained, and slow to tenderize. Almost all shoulder sold now is lamb, which is milder and cooks faster; if you do find true mutton, expect to add 30-45 minutes and a little more water to the pan.
Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperatures; 'moderate' is conventionally read as somewhere in the region of 325-350F. The dish calls for it twice: for the main roast and again for the 25-minute finish with the potatoes.
How long is "three-quarters done"For a rolled lamb shoulder, count roughly 20 minutes per pound at 350F, then pull it about 20-25 degrees short of your target and let the final oven stage carry it there. A boneless rolled shoulder is best at 145-150F for pink, or taken well past that to 175-185F if you want it falling apart — the middle range is where shoulder is toughest.
SautoirA shallow straight-sided pan, not a deep pot. Use a wide skillet so the onions and potato slices lie in a thin layer and colour rather than steam.
Salt pork liningThe fragments in the bottom of the pan are there as a fat cushion and flavour base, not for the table. Unsmoked salt pork or fatty pancetta does the job; if it is heavily salted, rinse it, since the finished fat gets poured over the potatoes.
Salting at the endRanhofer directs a final seasoning with salt 'a few minutes before serving'; he gives no reason, and the meat and potatoes are each seasoned earlier as well. Taste the strained fat before you add any more salt to the potatoes.
PotatoesSlice on the thin side of 'medium' so that the seven or eight minutes in butter with the onions brings them close to tender; the 25 minutes around the meat is a finish, not the main cooking.
Paper frillsPurely decorative — a cuff of folded paper over the bone end. Omit without loss.
YieldTwo shoulders serve 8-10. One shoulder halves the recipe cleanly; use two onions rather than four.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this is a good example of how even a plain joint was handled there: boned, rolled, sewn, roasted on salt pork, then re-plated on an earthenware dish with a garnish cooked in its own fat and finished with paper frills for the dining room. Shoulder was the cheap end of the sheep, and boning and rolling it was the standard way to make an awkward cut carve neatly. The potatoes here are fried in butter with onion and then basted with strained fat, which distinguishes them from a pommes boulang\for baked in stock beneath the joint. Mutton itself was ordinary eating in nineteenth-century America and Britain; its near-disappearance from English-speaking markets over the twentieth century, in favour of young lamb, is why recipes like this one now read as more exotic than they were.