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Shoulder of Spring Lamb, Mint Sauce
Carefully remove the blade bone, neatly trim all around and season a nice shoulder spring lamb with a teaspoon salt and a half teaspoon pepper. Fold up and firmly tie with string, place in a roasting pan with two tablespoons water and spread over one tablespoon melted butter. Set in the oven to roast for forty minutes, turning and frequently basting with its own gravy. Remove, dress on a hot dish, untie, skim the fat from the gravy, then pour the gravy over, decorate with a little water cress and serve.
A boned and rolled shoulder, roasted fast and served in its own pan juices. The original assumes a cook who knows what heat a roast wants, so the number is the first thing to supply.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given; the book assumes the cook knows. For a modern oven, start hot (around 425F) and finish at 375-400F. Forty minutes total will only work at roughly that heat, and only for a small shoulder.
- "Spring lamb"The term meant a very young animal, a few months old and milk-fed, prized in spring. Such a shoulder would have been considerably smaller than a supermarket lamb shoulder today, which is older and heavier and will need closer to an hour.
- Cook to temperature, not clockPull the roast at 130-135F in the thickest part for pink, 140-145F for medium, and rest it fifteen minutes before untying. Forty minutes is a plausible time for a small joint and a serious undercook for a large one.
- Boning the shoulderRemoving the blade bone from a shoulder is fiddly work around the joint; a butcher will do it and roll it in seconds. Tie at 1-inch intervals so the roll holds its shape when the string comes off at the table.
- The two tablespoons waterThat is not braising liquid, it is there to keep the drippings from scorching before fat renders out. Check it once during roasting and add a splash if the pan is dry, or the "gravy" you are meant to skim and pour will burn.
- BastingFrequent basting was necessary in an oven with uneven, drier radiant heat. In a modern oven every fifteen minutes is enough, and each opening costs you temperature.
- The mint sauceThe title promises it but the instructions do not include it; it would have been a separate recipe elsewhere. The standard version is chopped mint steeped in vinegar with a little sugar, made an hour ahead and served cold, not cooked.
- YieldA small boned shoulder serves about four, a large modern one about six. Watercress is the garnish, and its pepperiness is a real foil for the fat.
Shoulder is the cheaper end of the lamb, fattier and more sinewy than the leg, and boning and rolling it was a common way to make it carve like a proper roast. The pairing with mint sauce is English and long-established: sharp vinegar and herb against rich young mutton fat. "Spring lamb" reflects a seasonal meat trade that has largely disappeared, when very young animals reached market early in the year and commanded a premium for their pale, mild flesh; year-round supply from both hemispheres has since flattened the calendar. The recipe's brevity is characteristic of Alexander Filippini, a Delmonico's chef whose books were written for cooks who already knew how their range behaved and needed only the seasoning, the timing and the presentation.