A dish very much favoured at small Edwardian dinner parties. Your butcher will prepare the crown of lamb if you order it a day or two in advance. The cutlets, well trimmed and joined only by the skin, are turned inside out, and fastened so that the dish looks exactly like a crown.

Place 3 oz. (90 g.) butter in a tin and stand the crown upright. Put in oven at 400° F., gas mark 6, for 10 minutes; then reduce heat to 350° F., gas mark 4, and cook for another 30 minutes. Meanwhile prepare very fine creamed potato, and when you dish your crown fill the middle with it and serve small heaps of spring vegetables round it. Alternatively, the middle is sometimes filled with a macedoine of vegetables, including tiny new potatoes, or with a rich forcemeat. If forcemeat is used, the crown is filled before cooking, and the top should be basted once or twice.

The dish requires (served separately) a very good gravy into which some sherry and a tablespoon of red-currant jelly have been stirred, or an espagnole or good tomato sauce.