Roast lamb with laver sauce is a recipe associated with Wales and Welsh cuisine.
Lamb and mutton dishes are widespread and common in all the old counties of Wales and have long been traditional, with all regions having their own variations and contribution, let alone the various sheep breeds, to make to a lamb dish worthy of being the national dish.
Mountain lamb is sweet,
Valley lamb is fatter,
I therefore deemed it meet
To carry off the latter!
(Traditional Welsh ditty).
The meal is a contender for the national dish of Wales, and has a long tradition and historical provenence. "A capital dinner! You don't get moor mutton with laver sauce every day!" (Collins 1875). The dish was eaten by George Borrow and is worthy of a mention in Wild Wales in 1856.
Salt marsh lamb from the River Towy is also popular in South Wales.
Famous quotes containing the words roast, lamb and/or sauce:
“Rice and peas fit into that category of dishes where two ordinary foods, combined together, ignite a pleasure far beyond the capacity of either of its parts alone. Like rhubarb and strawberries, apple pie and cheese, roast pork and sage, the two tastes and textures meld together into the sort of subtle transcendental oneness that we once fantasized would be our experience when we finally found the ideal mate.”
—John Thorne, U.S. cookbook writer. Simple Cooking, “Rice and Peas: A Preface with Recipes,” Viking Penguin (1987)
“You of the top hat,
Mr. God,
you of the Cross made of lamb bones,
you of the camps, sacking the rejoice out of Germany,
I tell you this . . .
it will not do.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“There’s no sauce in the world like hunger.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)