Roast Mutton
A saddle or leg of mutton should be prepared by carefully removing the outer skin, searing the cut surfaces. Mutton requires a longer time than beef to roast, and should be well cooked, additional time must be allowed, and it can thus be cooked to suit any taste. A roast should be placed upon a rack after it has been seared, and when half done it should be turned over on the rack that both sides may be roasted alike. After the roast has been removed from the pan, if the greater portion of the drippings is carefully poured off, a gravy can be made from the brown jelly or glaze adherring to the bottom of the pan. Currant or other acid jelly should be served with roast mutton.
The instructions here assume a cook who already knows how to run a roasting oven, so the numbers are all missing. These are the ones that matter.
- Mutton is not lambMutton is sheep well past its first year — usually reckoned at over one or two years old — darker, firmer, and far stronger in flavour than anything sold as lamb. Outside halal and specialist butchers it is hard to find in the US; a leg or saddle of lamb is the practical substitute, and it will cook faster and taste milder than the book intends.
- The cutsA saddle is the whole unsplit loin, both sides of the backbone, and it is a large joint — figure 8 to 10 servings. A bone-in leg of 6 to 7 lb serves 6 to 8.
- "Searing" means a hot startThe recipe gives no temperatures. A hot start of 15 to 20 minutes at 450-475F to set the surface, then dropping to 325-350F for the remainder, will produce the effect described. Alternatively brown the joint in a heavy pan on the stovetop and roast at a steady 325F throughout.
- The outer skinThe "outer skin" is the fell, the papery membrane over the fat. On old mutton it was pulled off because it carried much of the rank flavour. On modern lamb the fell helps the joint hold its shape and is usually left on; if it bothers you, take it off before searing, not after.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clock"Well cooked" reflects a genuine preference for mutton, whose fat tastes unpleasant when underdone. For lamb, 130-135F at the thickest point away from bone gives medium rare, 145F medium, 155F and up for the fully cooked result described here. Rest the joint 15 to 20 minutes before carving.
- Turning on the rackWorth doing in a modern oven only if your heat is uneven. A single flip halfway is enough; the point is even browning, not even cooking.
- The gravyPour off the fat but keep every scrap of the dark glaze welded to the pan. Set the pan over direct heat, add stock or water, and scrape hard as it bubbles. This is a thin pan gravy, not a thickened sauce, unless you whisk a spoonful of flour into the retained fat first.
- The jellyRed currant is traditional; a tart crabapple, quince or even a sharp cranberry jelly does the same job of cutting the fat. Serve it cold, on the side.
Mutton was ordinary American and British eating when this book was compiled — sheep were kept for wool as much as meat, and the animals reached the table old. Its decline in the United States came later, often attributed to wartime rations that are said to have given a generation a lasting dislike of strong sheep, and to a market that increasingly wanted young, mild lamb. The pairing with currant jelly is an old one, generally traced to the English habit of serving sharp fruit preserves with rich, fatty meats, and it survives in American cooking chiefly as mint jelly with lamb. The technique described — sear hard, finish slower, lift the joint onto a rack so it roasts rather than stews in its own drippings, then build a gravy from the pan glaze — is the standard turn-of-the-century roasting method, written down here for a cook who was expected to judge her own oven by hand.