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Beef, Silverside of, Salt
A silverside of beef weighing nine pounds should be put into cold water with a few carrots, turnips, and onions, and boiled very slowly for three and a half hours, being skimmed as often as the scum comes to the top. The marrow from the bone should be taken out and put on toast, sprinkled with pepper, and served separately. Should the vegetables appear to be cooked before the meat they can be taken out, kept hot, and put in the pot again at the finish. Probable cost, 9s.
A plain instruction for boiling a salted joint, written when a 9 lb piece of beef was an ordinary domestic purchase. Two things need attention: the salt already in the meat, and the word "boiled."
- Soak firstCassell's assumes you know that a brined joint from the butcher's tub is soaked before cooking. Modern vacuum-packed salt beef and corned silverside vary a great deal in saltiness; give it 4-12 hours in several changes of cold water, or at minimum rinse it well, and taste the cooking liquor early so you can dilute it if needed.
- "Boiled very slowly" means never boilingThis is the hinge of the dish. Hold the water at 180-190F, with barely a tremble at the surface. A genuine rolling boil squeezes the muscle fibres and gives you dry, stringy salt beef no matter how long you cook it.
- The cutSilverside is the outer face of the hind leg, sold in the US as bottom round. It is very lean and has no marbling to protect it, which is why the gentle heat and the long soak both matter.
- TimeThree and a half hours for 9 lb is on the short side by current practice; reckon on 30 minutes per pound plus half an hour, and judge by feel rather than the clock. A skewer should slide in and out with almost no resistance. If it drags, keep going.
- The marrow boneA boned silverside has no marrow. The instruction assumes a marrowbone in the pot alongside, sold today as a beef shank or femur section. Ask the butcher to saw it lengthwise so the marrow can be spooned out onto toast.
- VegetablesCarrots, turnips and onions here are aromatics, not a garnish, and will be exhausted long before the meat. The recipe's advice to lift them out is sound; better still, discard the first batch and add fresh ones for the last 40 minutes.
- Resting and carvingLet the joint stand 20 minutes in a little of its liquor before slicing, and carve thinly across the grain. Silverside cut thick and with the grain eats tough even when perfectly cooked.
- Yield and costA 9 lb joint serves 12-16 hot, with a good deal left for cold cuts and hash. The "9s." is nine shillings, a Victorian retail price of no use as a conversion.
Salting beef in brine was the standard way of holding down a large joint before mechanical refrigeration, and silverside was the cut of choice because it is lean, holds its shape in the pot and slices cleanly cold the next day. The pink colour comes from saltpetre in the pickle. Cured beef of this kind is called "corned" in North America, traditionally explained as a reference to the coarse corns of salt used in the cure. The recipe's small ceremony of marrow spread on toast and served separately, seasoned only with pepper, appears in nineteenth-century English cookery books; it fell out of fashion in the twentieth century and has been revived mainly in restaurants.