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Beef, Aitchbone of, Roasted
An aitchbone of beef weighing ten pounds will take three and a half hours to cook in a moderate oven. Baste frequently, and pour the gravy that flows from the meat over it. It should be well hung before being used. Probable cost, 8d. per pound.
A bare-bones instruction of the kind Cassell's gives for a cut every Victorian butcher stocked and almost no modern one does. Most of the work is in sourcing and in knowing when to stop roasting.
- What an aitchbone isA corruption of "nache-bone" (the rump bone), it is the cut taken from the hip end of the round, sold bone-in and often weighing 8-14 lb. Few butchers cut it now; a bone-in top sirloin roast or a bone-in rump roast of similar weight behaves the same way, and a good butcher will cut one to order given notice.
- "A moderate oven"350F. For a large bone-in roast it is worth starting at 425F for the first 20-25 minutes to colour the surface, then dropping to 350F for the remainder.
- The timing, testedThree and a half hours for ten pounds works out to about 21 minutes per pound, which in a modern oven will carry the meat past medium. Cook to internal temperature instead: 125-130F at the thickest point away from the bone for medium-rare, 135-140F for medium. Expect roughly 15-18 minutes per pound at 350F.
- "Well hung"This means dry-aged, hung in a cool larder for a week or more to tenderise and concentrate flavour. Supermarket beef is wet-aged in vacuum packaging and needs no further treatment; if you can get dry-aged beef the difference in this cut, which is not a naturally tender one, is real.
- BastingThe instruction to pour the pan drippings back over the meat helps keep the exposed surface from drying. Baste every 20-30 minutes, and if the pan runs dry add a little water or stock rather than letting the drippings scorch.
- Resting and carvingRest the joint 20-30 minutes under loose foil before carving; a roast this size loses a great deal of juice if cut straight from the oven. Carve in thin slices parallel to the bone, working from the thick side.
- YieldA ten-pound bone-in joint serves 12-16, with the bone and trim worth keeping for stock.
- "8d. per pound"Eightpence in pre-decimal currency, the book's standard note on cost. It suggests a comparatively cheap family joint rather than a prime one.
The aitchbone appears to take its name from Middle English nache, buttock, ultimately from Latin natis: the "nache-bone" became "an aitchbone" through the same slippage that turned a napron into an apron. It sits at the hip end of the carcass, and in the Victorian butcher's economy it was one of the less expensive large roasting joints, which is why Cassell's prices it. British carcass breaking has since been reorganised around boneless primals for supermarket sale, and the aitchbone has largely disappeared as a named cut, surviving mostly in older butchery texts and in the salted or spiced "boiled aitchbone" that was once a standard cold-table joint.