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Leg of Spring Lamb, Mint Sauce
Procure a nice leg of spring lamb, neatly trim the small handle-bone, season it all around with a heavy teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Place it in a roasting pan, spread over two tablespoons melted lard, pour two tablespoons of water into the pan and set in oven to roast for one hour, being careful to turn and baste it with its gravy once in a while. Dress on a hot dish, decorate with a little watercress, skim the fat from the gravy, then stain the latter over the lamb and serve with a mint sauce separately.
A plain roast that assumes two things the text never states: a small spring lamb leg and a hot oven. Both need pinning down before you start.
- Oven temperatureNo number is given; the temperature is left to the cook. Roast at 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the surface, then 350F for the remainder.
- One hour is a clue to the sizeA true spring lamb leg was small, roughly 4 to 5 lb, and an hour suits that at these temperatures. A modern supermarket leg of 6 to 8 lb will need closer to 1 1/2 hours, and the only reliable guide is a thermometer in the thickest part away from bone: 130-135F for pink, 145F for medium.
- The handle-boneThis is the exposed shank end. Trimming it neatly means sawing off the knuckle and scraping the bone clean so it can be gripped for carving; any butcher will do it if asked.
- LardTwo tablespoons of melted lard is chiefly a basting fat. Olive oil or softened butter will do the same job, and a well-covered leg with its own fat cap needs very little.
- The water in the panTwo tablespoons is there to keep the drippings from scorching, not to steam the meat. Check it partway through and add a splash more if the pan is dry, or the gravy will be bitter.
- Basting and turningTurning a leg of lamb repeatedly costs you oven heat. Baste twice at most, or skip it entirely and let the fat cap do the work.
- Rest before carvingThe original sends the leg straight to the hot dish. Give it 15 minutes loosely tented; the juices redistribute and the pan gravy will be less watery for the wait.
- The gravy is thin by designSkimming the fat from a few spoonfuls of pan liquid gives you a light jus, not a thickened sauce. Deglaze the pan with stock or water and reduce briefly if you want more than a trickle.
- Mint sauce is assumed, not givenNo formula appears with this recipe: finely chopped mint steeped in vinegar with a little sugar and a spoonful of hot water, served cold and unthickened. It is sharp, not jellied.
- YieldA 4 to 5 lb leg serves six; a larger modern leg will stretch to eight with a first-course before it.
"Spring lamb" was once a seasonal reality rather than a marketing phrase: lambs born in late winter came to market in spring and early summer at well under a year old, and the meat was prized for being pale and mild compared with the strong mutton eaten the rest of the year. The pairing with mint sauce is English, generally traced to the long-standing practice of serving sharp acid condiments with fatty roast meats, and by the nineteenth century it was fixed firmly enough that English cookery writers treated it as inseparable from lamb. The roasting method here is spare, with the seasoning weighed out and the sauce left to the cook's own repertoire.