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Corned Beef
Corned beef should be put while hot into a pan or mould, in layers of fat and lean, with the fibres running the long way of the pan. After pressing it, place it on the platter and slice thinly from one end. This gives uniform slices, cut across the grain, each one having a fair proportion of fat and lean.
This is a page about pressing, not about curing. The instruction is that boiled corned beef goes into a mould while it is still hot, is weighted down, and is only sliced once it has set cold.
- Why press it at allHot meat off a long boil is loaded with gelatine, and under weight as it cools that gelatine glues the layers to each other. Pressed, the joint cuts in clean thin slices that hold together; unpressed, it falls into shreds at the knife.
- Fibres the long way of the panThe page is specific about this and it is the whole point. Lay the meat in with the grain running along the length of the tin, and then slicing across the short end is automatically slicing across the grain. Get it the wrong way round and every slice is long fibre.
- Layers of fat and leanAlternated deliberately so that each slice carries some of both. A modern piece of corned beef arrives as one flat slab, so to follow the page you have to take the boiled joint apart and rebuild it in the tin, which is what it is quietly asking for.
- The mouldA loaf tin, a sheet of greaseproof paper, a board or a second tin on top, and a weight — two tins of food are enough. Overnight in the refrigerator under that weight will do it.
- Which cutBrisket. The flat or first cut is leaner and more even and slices best on its own; the point end is fattier and looser, and that makes it the better choice for this treatment, because the fat is what you need to layer.
- Thin, and coldA long thin knife and the shallowest angle you can manage. Thickness decides whether corned beef eats as tender more than the cooking does, and the page is right to send it to the platter out of the mould rather than straight out of the pot.
A pressed joint is a machine for making a large piece of meat last in a house without refrigeration. Corned beef came in as a whole cured joint, was boiled once, pressed once, and then stood in the cold larder as a loaf to be sliced for days — cold meat at luncheon, cold meat for supper, cold meat taken out to the field. The press was ordinary equipment, and the technique on this page is doing two jobs at the same time: it extends the joint across a week, and it guarantees that every slice cut in front of the family looks like every other. That second job is why the instruction appears in a carving book at all. The person at the head of the table was carving in full view, and a joint that fell apart under the knife was a small public failure that pressing removes in advance.