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Leg of Mutton, Londonderry
Entirely bone a tender leg of mutton. Season all over with good teaspoon salt, half teaspoon pepper and two saltspoons grated nutmeg. Tie it well all around, giving its former shape. Heat two tablespoons melted lard in a braising pan, lay mutton in pan and brown on fire fifteen minutes, turning over once in a while. Place a mirepoix around the leg and brown five minutes more. Add four tablespoons currant jelly, half gill port wine, two tablespoons brandy, two gills demiglace and two gills tomato sauce. Tightly cover pan, then set in oven one hour, turning and basting once in a while. Remove, dress on a hot dish. Skim fat from surface of gravy, then reduce sauce to half quantity. Strain sauce through a Chinese strainer over the mutton and serve. N.B. Keep the left-over mutton fro Monday's luncheon.
A hotel-style braise written for a cook who already knows how to bone and tie a leg. The measurements are Victorian-American; the sauce is the part that needs translating.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of port is 4 tablespoons (a quarter cup) and two gills each of demi-glace and tomato sauce are one cup each. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, making the nutmeg half a teaspoon in total.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the cook was expected to judge the range. A covered braise of this size wants a moderate oven, roughly 325-350F, steady enough to hold the liquid at a bare simmer.
- Mutton or lambTrue mutton, sheep older than a year and by some reckonings over two, is rare outside halal and specialist butchers. A boned leg of lamb of 4-5 lb is the practical substitute and will be milder and noticeably quicker to cook.
- One hour is optimisticA boned, rolled and tied leg needs more like 1.5 to 2 hours at 325F to become genuinely tender, and mutton longer still. Judge by feel: the meat should yield to a skewer with no resistance. If you want it pink rather than braise-tender, pull it at 130-135F internal, but then it is a roast, not this dish.
- MirepoixIn this period that means roughly diced onion, carrot and celery, often with a scrap of bacon or ham fat and a bay leaf. It is aromatic ballast only; the recipe strains it out at the end.
- Demi-glaceA reduced brown veal stock, either homemade or a good commercial base. Diluted bouillon will not do here, since the finished sauce depends on gelatin from the stock for its gloss after reduction.
- Chinese strainerA chinois, the conical fine-mesh strainer. A fine sieve lined with a single layer of cheesecloth gives the same result.
- The hingeTie the roll tightly and evenly. A boned leg that loosens in the pan cooks unevenly, falls apart when you dress it, and gives you nothing to carve into neat slices for the Monday luncheon the note promises.
- YieldA 5 lb boned leg serves eight generously, with enough left for the cold luncheon.
The name follows the nineteenth-century hotel convention of tagging a dish with a place or a patron, and the sweet-tart jelly here stands in for the mint or redcurrant traditionally served beside mutton in Britain. The International Cook Book (1906) is generally credited to Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and the writing here is unmistakably professional: French method, French vocabulary (mirepoix, demi-glace, chinois), and a closing note about reusing the joint that belongs to the economy of a private household rather than a restaurant. Mutton was still ordinary meat in 1906 and cheaper than lamb; its near-disappearance from American and British tables over the following half-century, driven by a market preference for young, mild meat, is the main reason a recipe like this now reads as exotic.