Home › Meats and Entrees › Kebobbed Mutton
Kebobbed Mutton
(England.) Bone, stuff a shoulder of mutton with breadcrumbs, onions, herbs, egg, and lemon peel, and a little butter; coat it with egg and crumbs, herbs, and chopped onion, and bake till brown, basting it with its own gravy of butter, and 1/2 cup of hot water. Add a tablespoonful of ketchup to the sauce, and serve with boiled onions or green peas.
A stuffed, boned shoulder roast in the eighteenth-century English manner, written for a cook who already knew how to bone a joint and judge a fire. The gaps are all quantities and temperatures.
- The hinge: keep the crumb coat from burningAn egg-and-crumb crust on a long roast means the outside browns long before the middle is done. Brown it uncovered for the first 20-30 minutes, then tent loosely with foil and remove the foil only at the end.
- Mutton, and what to buy insteadMutton is sheep over two years old, still sold by halal and specialist butchers but absent from most supermarkets. A 4-5 lb boneless lamb shoulder behaves the same way; it will cook faster and taste milder, and hogget (one to two years) is the closer match.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives none. A stuffed shoulder wants 325-350F. Shoulder is a collagen-heavy cut, so it is better taken well past pink -- around 190F internal, when it slices and pulls easily -- than to the 145F you would use for a leg.
- Stuffing proportionsNothing is specified. For a 5 lb boned shoulder, roughly 2 cups fresh breadcrumbs, 1 large onion finely chopped and softened in butter, the grated zest of a lemon, 2 tablespoons mixed parsley and thyme, 2 oz butter and 1 egg to bind. Season firmly; unsalted crumb stuffing tastes of nothing.
- Boning and tyingAsk the butcher to bone the shoulder and leave it in one sheet, or buy it rolled and untie it. Spread the stuffing, roll with the grain, and tie at 1-inch intervals before the egg-and-crumb coating goes on, or the crust cracks off as you handle it.
- "Ketchup"In an English recipe of this vintage this is most likely mushroom or walnut ketchup -- a thin, dark, salty sauce, not tomato. Mushroom ketchup is still made; Worcestershire sauce is the nearest supermarket stand-in.
- Basting liquidHalf a cup of hot water and butter will cook dry well before the joint is done. Top up the pan with a few tablespoons of water or stock whenever it threatens to scorch, and baste every 20 minutes or so.
- The gravyRest the joint 15 minutes, skim the fat from the pan, deglaze with a little stock or water, whisk in the ketchup and reduce. There is no thickener in the original and it does not need one.
- YieldA 4-5 lb stuffed shoulder serves six to eight. Boiled onions or peas, as directed, plus potatoes make it a full plate.
"Kebobbed" is the eighteenth-century English spelling of what we now write as kebab, from the Persian and Urdu kabab. In English hands it did not mean meat on a skewer in the modern sense: a "kebobbed" joint was one cut open or sliced through and packed with seasoned crumbs, onion, herbs and lemon before being tied up and roasted. Its appearance here, labelled simply "(England.)", is characteristic of the international recipe collection, which gathered dishes by nation and rarely noticed that the English entry had a borrowed name. That the borrowing had by then shifted so far in sense says something about how thoroughly the word had been naturalised.