The Chemistry of CookeryWilliams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Science
The Chemistry of Cookery
Williams, W. Mattieu (William Mattieu)
Cooking
What, then, is the remedy for this? It is twofold. First, to seal up
the pores of these additional surfaces as completely as possible; and
secondly, to diminish to the utmost the time of exposure to the dry
air. Logically following up these principles, I arrive at a practical
formula which will probably induce certain orthodox cooks to denounce
me as a culinary paradoxer. It is this: That _the smaller the joint to
be roasted, the higher the temperature to which its surface should be
exposed_. The roasting of a small joint should, in fact, be conducted
in nearly the same manner as the grilling of a chop or steak described
in my last. The surface should be crusted or browned—burned, if you
please—as speedily as possible, in such wise that the juices within
shall be held there under high pressure, and only allowed to escape by
burst and splutters, rather than by steady evaporation.
The best way of doing this is a problem to be solved by the practical
cook. I only expound the principles, and timidly suggest the mode of
applying them. In a metallurgical laboratory, where I am most at home,
I could roast a small joint beautifully by suspending it inside a large
red-hot steel-smelter’s crucible, or, better still, in an apparatus
called a ‘muffle,’ which is a fireclay tunnel open in front, and so
arranged in a suitable furnace as to be easily made red-hot all
round. A small joint placed on a dripping-pan and run into this would
be equally heated by all-round converging radiation, and exquisitely
roasted in the course of ten to thirty minutes, according to its size.
Some such an apparatus has yet to be invented in order that we may
learn the flavour and tenderness of a perfectly-roasted small joint of
beef or mutton.
For roasting large masses of meat, a different proceeding is necessary.
Here we have to contend, not with excessive surface in proportion
to bulk—as in the grilling of chops and steaks, and the roasting of
small joints—but with the contrary, viz. excessive bulk in proportion
to surface. If a baron of beef were to be treated according to my
prescription for a steak, or for a single small wing rib, or other
joint of three to five pounds weight, it would be charred on its
surface long before the heat could reach its centre.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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