No. 1732

Hind Quarter of Lamb with Mint Sauce or Colbert Sauce

Quartier de Derriere d'Agneau a la Sauce Menthe ou a la Sauce Colbert

Pare very carefully a good hind quarter of lamb; suppress and pare the end bone or handle bone after sawing it two inches below the joint of the leg; cut away the meat two inches down, then scrape the bone clean; now lay the quarter in a baking-pan (Fig. 136), salt it evenly, and baste with dripping fat; set it in a moderate oven and let cook for three-quarters to one hour. Dress on a long hot dish, trim the handle with a frill (No. 10), pour a little of its gravy over, and serve with a separate mint sauce (No. 616) or Colbert sauce (No. 451).

← No. 1731 Fore Quarter of Lamb with Stuffed Tomatoes—o Lamb No. 1733 Rack of Lamb, Castillane Sauce—Broiled →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer assumes a small milk-fed lamb, a coal range and a kitchen brigade with a numbered sauce book at hand. Two things need translating: the size of the joint and the meaning of the cross-references.

What a hind quarter isThe leg plus the attached loin and part of the flank, cut as one piece — the lamb equivalent of a whole rump-and-round. Butchers rarely break lamb this way now; ask for a long-cut leg with the loin left on, or roast a bone-in leg and a rack separately and dress them together.
The timing tells you the sizeThree-quarters of an hour to an hour only works on a very young animal, perhaps 12-15 lb dressed weight. A modern hind quarter from a 40 lb lamb will take well over two hours. Roast to internal temperature rather than the clock: 130-135F at the thickest part of the leg for pink, rested 20 minutes.
Moderate ovenThe book gives no figure; 'moderate' is conventionally read as somewhere around 350F. If you want colour on the fat, start at 425F for 20 minutes and drop to 350F for the remainder.
Handle boneThe shank. Sawing it two inches below the leg joint, then cutting and scraping the meat back, is what is now called frenching — it gives a clean bone to grip for carving and to dress with a paper frill (No. 10). Purely presentational; skip it without loss.
Dripping fatFat rendered from roasting meats, commonly beef. Any neutral fat works, or the lamb's own trimmed fat rendered in the pan. A joint this fatty will largely baste itself.
The two saucesMint sauce (No. 616) is the English version: chopped mint steeped in vinegar with a little sugar, served cold and thin, not a jelly. Colbert sauce (No. 451) is broadly a meat-glaze sauce finished with butter and lemon juice, usually with chopped herbs — richer, and the better match if the lamb is older and stronger.
The pan gravyOnly "a little of its gravy" goes over the meat; the point is the roasting juices deglazed and degreased, not a thickened sauce. Anything more would fight the vinegar in the mint sauce.
YieldA hind quarter at this size serves 8 to 10. Carve the loin into chops first, then slice the leg parallel to the bone.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how the house handled a joint that was culturally contested. Serving lamb with a cold mint-and-vinegar sauce is an English habit, generally traced to the medieval and early modern practice of pairing acid sauces with fatty meat; French kitchens tended to regard it with suspicion. Ranhofer simply offers both, the English sauce or the classical Colbert o take take its name for Louis XIV's minister, one of a long list of nineteenth-century preparations given ministerial and aristocratic names. The numbered cross-references are the book's real character: it is written as a working reference for a professional brigade, where No. 616 and No. 451 would already be standing in bain-maries, and the roast itself needs only a paragraph.