Home › A Calendar of Dinners › May 4
May 4
Menu: Clear Gravy Soup; Crown of Lamb with Peas; Potato Croquettes; Bird's Nest Salad; Cheese Custard; Cauliflower; Sultana Roll, Strawberry Sauce; Coffee Crown of Lamb with Peas-Select parts from 2 loins containing ribs, scrape flesh from bone between ribs, as far as lean meat and trim off backbone. Shape each piece in semicircle, having ribs outside and sew pieces together to form a crown. Trim ends of bones evenly and rather short and wrap each bone in thin strip fat scraps to prevent bone from burning. Place on rack in dripping pan with bowl in center of crown to preserve its shape. Dredge with flour, sprinkle with salt and pepper, basting frequently with melted Crisco, and allowing 9 minutes to the pound for roasting. Cover bones with Criscoed paper. Remove paper from bones before serving and fill the center with peas. Place paper frills on chop bones and parsley around base. The center of crown may be filled with potato balls, French fried potatoes, or puree of chestnuts.
A crown roast is more butchery than cookery, and most of the work here is now done for you at the counter. The parts that need translating are the fat wrapping, the missing oven temperature, and the very short roasting time.
- Ask the butcherTwo whole loins of lamb, ribs frenched (flesh scraped from between the bones) and the chine bone removed, tied into a crown. This is a standard order and saves an hour of work. Two racks of eight give a crown of sixteen chops, serving eight.
- The missing temperatureThe book gives no oven temperature. Roast at 375F; searing at 450F for fifteen minutes and then dropping to 350F also works and browns the exterior better.
- Nine minutes to the pound is a guide, not a ruleWeigh after trimming and count on that time only as a first check. Lamb loin is lean and thin, and a crown carries a hollow centre, so it cooks faster than a solid joint. Pull at 130-135F at the thickest part of the eye, away from bone, for medium rare, and rest fifteen minutes.
- CriscoSubstitute any neutral fat for basting: melted butter, olive oil, or vegetable shortening. This text was written to sell shortening, so Crisco appears where a 1913 cook would otherwise have used butter or lamb drippings.
- Criscoed paper and fat scrapsBoth are devices to keep the exposed rib tips from charring. Small squares of foil pressed over each bone do the same job and come off cleanly; the strips of fat also self-baste, which foil does not.
- The bowl in the centreAny ovenproof bowl or a tight ball of foil will hold the ring open. Do not put the peas or potatoes in during roasting; they steam, absorb fat, and are added only at serving.
- SewingButcher's twine and a trussing needle, or simply tie the two racks together at the base and again near the tips. Remove all twine before the roast goes to the table.
- The fillingPeas, potato balls, French fried potatoes or chestnut puree all need to be finished while the roast rests, and the crown filled at the last moment. Paper frills are decorative only and are sold as cutlet frills.
- Dredging with flourA light dusting helps the surface brown and gives body to the pan juices. Skim the fat from the drippings and deglaze for a thin gravy.
The Story of Crisco was published by Procter & Gamble in 1913, two years after Crisco itself went on sale, and the recipes were compiled by Marion Harris Neil, then cookery editor of the Ladies' Home Journal. The book's job was to persuade cooks that a hydrogenated cottonseed shortening could stand in for butter and lard everywhere, which is why melted Crisco turns up as a basting fat for lamb. The book's Calendar of Dinners section offered menus through the year, and a crown roast was the kind of dish that anchored a company dinner: it is a display piece, and it depends entirely on the French trimming of the rib bones that lets the two racks curve into a ring. The paper frills, the parsley around the base and the mound of peas in the middle are all part of the same nineteenth-century service tradition, in which a roast was expected to arrive at the table already dressed.