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Beef Marrow Bones
Saw the bones into short lengths, and mix some flour and water into a paste to secure both ends, which should also have a floured cloth tied over them. Put them into boiling water, and let them boil from one and a half to two hours. Put small napkins round them, or a frill of paper, whichever is most convenient, and remove the paste before they are sent to table. Serve them on a napkin, with hot dry toast. The marrow may be spread upon the toast, and well seasoned with pepper and salt. When not wanted for immediate use the bones should be parboiled, as they will keep many days in this state. Probable cost for a large leg-bone, from 9d. to 1s.
A Victorian savoury reduced to its essentials: bone, marrow, hot toast. The only technical demand is keeping the marrow inside the bone while it cooks.
- The seal is the whole trickMarrow liquefies well below boiling and will run out of the open ends into the water. The flour-and-water paste plus a floured cloth tied over each end is a physical plug, not decoration othing else in the method matters as much.
- Getting the bones cutAsk the butcher to saw beef shank or femur into short lengths, roughly 3-4 inches; sawing them at home risks splintering bone into the marrow. Cross-cut sections (not split lengthwise) are what this method assumes.
- Boiling timeOne and a half to two hours is longer than the marrow strictly needs. If you want marrow that holds its shape enough to spread, 20-30 minutes at a bare simmer is closer to modern practice; a hard rolling boil also risks loosening the paste seal.
- The 'keeps many days' noteIgnore it. Parboiled bones held at room temperature for days is exactly the condition Victorian larders were built around and modern refrigeration replaced. Cooked bones and marrow should be chilled and used within a couple of days.
- Serving dressThe napkin round each bone and the paper frill let a diner handle a hot bone, as well as dressing the dish; a folded cloth serviette does the same job. The recipe directs that the paste be removed before the bones reach the table.
- The toast"Hot dry toast" means no butter — the marrow is the fat. Cut it thin, toast it firm enough to take a heavy spread, and have it ready as the bones come out, since marrow congeals quickly.
- Yield and costA large leg bone yields enough marrow for a round or two of toast, so a bone per person is a reasonable allowance for a savoury course. The 9d. to 1s. is Victorian money; marrow bones remain among the cheapest things at a butcher's counter.
- Oven alternativeIf you would rather roast than boil, standing the cut bones upright in a hot oven (around 425-450F) for 15-20 minutes achieves the same end without any paste; roasting is the common modern treatment. The book itself gives no oven method or temperature.
Marrow bones were a fixture of the English savoury course through the nineteenth century, eaten at the end of dinner with dry toast and plenty of pepper — the same slot that later went to anchovy toast or a Welsh rarebit. Silver marrow spoons and scoops, long and narrow, were made in quantity from the early eighteenth century onward, which suggests how routine the dish was at good tables well before this book recorded it. Queen Victoria is sometimes said to have taken marrow on toast regularly, a claim that is hard to pin down, though it fits a period that prized marrow as a delicacy rather than a scrap. Its appearance here, priced by the bone at a few pence, also shows the other side of the appeal: this was one of the cheapest ways to put something rich in front of a household, which is why a dictionary of cookery aimed at middle-class kitchens bothered to explain how to plug the ends.