When properly prepared, a crown roast of lamb seems a gift sent straight from the Kennedy era, an entree of terrific richness and dainty proportion. When we were young, our dad made one every Easter. The roast, with its ring of vertical rib bones topped with paper frills, was an architectural feat second only to a volcano cake - though, as we later discovered, a lot easier to pull off. In our college years, the crown roast of lamb's symbolism might have clouded our affection for the dish had Dad and Mom not already given it up for more fashionable showstoppers like osso buco and beef tenderloin.

But recently, a whiff of spring lamb sizzling in a restaurant oven caused us to recall the crown roast and, for a moment, our guileless former selves. So we built a spring dinner around recreating it. But how to do this without Dad and his trusty butcher's needle and twine?

We might have gotten in touch with John and Sukey Jamison, the owners of Jamison Farm, the all-natural outfit in Pennsylvania that provides Alain Ducasse and Daniel Boulud with their lamb (800-237-5262 or www.jamisonfarm.com). For $145 plus shipping, the Jamisons will send three racks of lamb - 24 chops - pretrimmed of the blade bone and a great deal of fat, and presewn, end to end, into a glorious crown. But we could not assemble on a single day enough nonvegetarian friends, so we settled for a crown roast that was closer to what we had consumed as children: two racks of lamb, each with eight rib bones, that could be shaped into a tight circle of 16 chops, serving five to eight people. We planned a dinner for six, just to be sure.

One of the joys of a crown roast is that with such a stunner of a main course, you can get away with a lot: jeans and an untucked shirt, but also the simplest side dishes imaginable. For us, that meant mashed potatoes with buttermilk and scallion tops (mounded in the center of the crown for best effect), and steamed asparagus drizzled with a vinaigrette you whisk together as the guests are settling into their first glasses of wine. For dessert, we bought ice cream from the supermarket, and topped it with warm fruit preserves.

By far the easiest way to get a crown roast is to ask the nearest knowledgeable butcher for two racks of lamb to be trimmed and Frenched - that is, having the meat between the ribs removed, and having the ribs cleaned with vigorous scrapes of the knife to leave 16 perfectly naked bones with an even course of meat across the bottom. You can save money by buying the entire ribcage of a lamb (two racks fused together, one left, one right) at a megamarket, asking the butcher to remove the backbone, and trimming and Frenching the racks yourself.

We have done this successfully, but we may not do it again. If getting the attention of the butchers at the megamart was not difficult enough, convincing them to strike up the bandsaw a few minutes before closing time was among the most daunting challenges we have ever faced.

Some butchers, like Dominick DeSantis, the assistant meat manager at Citarella in Manhattan, will patiently prepare the two racks (ordering a few hours to a day in advance is recommended). Mr. DeSantis set aside the fatty strips from between the bones for us to take home (we had paid $13.99 per pound, after all). You can use the strips in stock or gravy, or you can season them with salt and pepper and add them to the roasting pan, which we did, so they emerge as lamb cracklins, to be chopped and blended into a stuffing or mashed potatoes for a roasty bonus.

ONCE we got the two slabs home, we stitched them into the crown. First we laid the racks end to end on a cutting board, with the inside (or concave side) of the rack facing up, with the ribs pointing away from us. We scored a shallow vertical incision, just an eighth of an inch deep, into the flesh between each pair of ribs, at the meat end of the chops, to facilitate bending the racks to form the curve of the crown. Then, with a butcher's needle threaded with twine, we laced a single stitch across the seam where the racks came together.

That first stitch was near the bottom of the meat end of the chop, and it was just wide enough to encircle the edgemost rib of each rack. We continued lacing upward in a simple spiral, threading a total of three complete, tight stitches, and tied off the ends of the twine on the convex side.

Now we had a long slab of 16 ribs, which we stood upright on the cutting board, the rib tips pointing skyward, and shaped it, bending away from the sewn seam so the open ends of the racks came together into the shape of crown, with the concave side forming the outside of the crown. We sewed the open seam together in the same way we had done the first, and the deed was done, the crown ready for seasoning, with less than 10 minutes' effort.

Domestic lamb is more than suitable for crown roast and with its slightly firmer texture seems to stand up better on the plate than the incredibly supple lamb from Australia and New Zealand. The local lamb is also a good deal.

Prime-grade lamb, however, is worth the splurge - for the noticeably higher quality of fat and flesh but also because the meat is better allocated, with a more distinct plug at the end of the rib, surrounded by an even layer of fat. Choice racks appear more disheveled, the chop less rotund. Last week, prime lamb cost about $14 per pound, choice around $9, with Australian and New Zealand lamb about $16.

All sentiment aside, the crown rib roast is, to our minds, one of the most festive and serviceable cuts of meat, beautifully proportioned and wieldy, with luscious, lean red meat at the chop end tapering off into rustic, fatty and crispy rib bits at the bone end, with a built-in handle to facilitate gnawing.

The simplest seasonings seem to work best for crown roast; Mr. DeSantis recommends the classic Mediterranean mix of garlic and rosemary, which is about as complicated as crown roast should get. We massaged the lamb with olive oil, showered it with salt and pepper, and pressed finely chopped garlic and rosemary (about a tablespoon each, per rack) into the meat a few minutes before we put it in the oven.

What makes the resinous, medieval rosemary such a perfect match for the slightly grassy taste of lamb? We have yet to hear an adequate explanation from the scientists, but we are guessing it may have something to do with the slippery richness of conjugated linoleic acid, an unsaturated fatty acid that is found in the fat of all grazing animals but in< highest concentrations in lamb.

That same linoleic character, which contributes to lamb's gaminess, can play tricks on delicate wines, so for the mighty crown roast it is best to choose an open, fruit-forward wine with a firm enough structure to stand up to it. Pinot noir is a good choice, and the David Bruce pinot from the central coast of California works well, with flattering black cherry notes and a gentle price tag, at about $16.

The only caveat about crown roast is that cooking one is a bit like walking a tightrope: it attracts a great deal of attention, and you have only one chance to get it right. Returning the disassembled chops to the oven is an ignoble, if occasionally necessary, measure for a proud chef.

We took great pains to avoid overcooking the roast, a more pressing threat for the absent-minded.

Leaving enough time for a finicky oven to settle in, we heated it to 425 degrees and heated the roasting pan as well, a step that evened out the heat across the system and reduced roasting time by about five minutes. An eight-pound crown roast (before trimming) emerged from our oven after 45 minutes, just beyond medium rare.

After half an hour, attend your crown obsessively, but without opening and shutting the oven door unnecessarily. With close to $100 worth of prime lamb at stake, you can't afford to toast the roast.