1885 New Guide Hotel Bar Restaurant

THE NEW GUIDE FOR HOTELS, ETC.

296

CHAPTER VIIL

Roasting and Serving.

^HE great essentials of roast meat are, First,

that it

1

Second, juicy.

should be tender.

Third, the outside

crisp Fourth, that there should be no trace of sappiness or soddenness, such as we find on baked meats where steam generates in the oven and so affects the cuticle. Roast beef, or mutton, &c., should be crisp outside, not burnt or dried up an inch deep, but having just a slight delicate covering of fine golden hued casing over the fat, and a chestnut brown covering on the lean. When the carver inserts his knife into the joint, the outer case over the fat should give way with a slight crackle. It is far from creditable to the roasting cook, when the carver has to saw at a horny substance, or his knife sinks into a mass of flabby, dirty coloured, fat burnt here; gravy sodden there and with a general appearance of bad health about the joint. To roast well therefore is an art, and although it sounds not do to put the joint into a cold, or half cold gas roaster, or in front of a dull fire, to let them get warm together. It extracts the goodness from the meat, destroys the flavour, and is not roasting. Hot bright fires in the open range. The hot air ovens, lighted 10 or 20 minutes at full power, and then the joint may be put in to cook. The rule, as I have seen it expressed in some of the children's teaching books is good, of putting the joint close to the fire, for the first five minutes to form a case and seal up the juices, and I only wish some of the professed women cooks would believe in it. without being tough or horny. so comparatively simple, yet it requires knowledge. It will