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Boned Leg of Mutton, Fribourgoise
Carefully bone a tender leg of mutton, season interior and all around with a level teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, fold and tie up to its former shape. Place a mirepoix with one ounce butter in a roasting pan and brown for ten minutes. Lay mutton over mirepoix, pour in a pint cider, then let reduce on fire to half the quantity. Pour in three-quarters pint broth, one and a half gills demi-glace, cover pan, set in oven for one hour and fifteen minutes, basting and turning leg once in a while, remove, untie and dress on hot dish. Skim fat off gravy, then reduce on the fire to about one and a half gills. Strain gravy, pour a third of it over leg, the balance in a sauce bowl, arrange six stuffed cabbages around leg and serve.
A braise dressed up as a roast: the leg cooks covered, in cider and stock, and the pan liquid becomes the sauce. Two things decide the outcome — the strength of the cider and the doneness of the meat.
- Gills and pintsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills is 3/4 cup. Three-quarters of a pint of broth is 1 1/2 cups; the pint of cider is 2 cups, reduced by half before the broth goes in.
- Which ciderIn a savoury braise like this, "cider" most likely means hard cider. A dry still or lightly sparkling cider gives the acidity the dish is built on; a sweet cider will reduce to something cloying. Books of this period did sometimes use "cider" for the sweet, unfermented kind, so the reading is not certain.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the book assumes the cook knows the oven. A covered braise of this size wants 325F; the meat should barely tremble in the liquid rather than boil.
- Mutton versus lambMutton is sheep over a year, usually well over — darker, stronger, and slower to tenderise. A 5-6 lb boned leg of lamb is the practical substitute, and it will reach doneness well inside the stated time. True mutton at that weight often wants two hours or more.
- Timing and donenessOne hour fifteen suits lamb cooked pink to medium; check at 60 minutes and pull at 130-135F at the thickest point, rising as it rests. Braised lamb held past about 150F goes dry and grainy before it goes tender, which is the awkward middle ground of any large leg cut.
- MirepoixDiced carrot, onion and celery, with a little bacon or ham if you want the period flavour. Ten minutes in butter is to colour it, not soften it through; the browning is where the gravy's depth begins.
- Demi-glaceA reduced brown veal stock thickened lightly with roux. A good commercial demi-glace concentrate or 3/4 cup of well-reduced dark stock does the job; without it the sauce stays thin, since nothing else in the recipe thickens.
- Tying and restingTie at 1-inch intervals so the boned leg holds a compact shape and cooks evenly. Rest it 15 minutes before untying — the recipe has you untie immediately, which lets the juices run onto the platter rather than back into the meat.
- The stuffed cabbagesAssumed to be made separately, six small cabbage parcels of forcemeat or leftover meat and rice, braised alongside or apart. Serves six to eight with them.
"Fribourgoise" points at Fribourg, the Swiss canton on the French-German language line, and in the restaurant French of the period a garnish name of this kind was often less a claim of provenance than a shorthand for a set of components — here cider, a brown braising liquor and stuffed cabbage. No codified "à la fribourgeoise" garnish is securely attested. Cabbage and cider together also read as broadly French-provincial rather than specifically Swiss, and cooks of the era moved such labels freely between menus. The recipe's real home is the professional kitchen: the mirepoix, the pint of cider reduced by half, the gills of demi-glace and the final straining and skimming belong to a standard professional sequence, applied to a cut that a household would more likely have roasted plain. Mutton itself was still ordinary market meat when this book appeared; its near-disappearance from English-speaking butchers over the following century is why a modern reader reaching for this page will almost certainly be cooking lamb.