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Marrow Bones
Saw the marrow bones into neat pieces, cover the ends with a paste made of flour and water, tie them in a floured cloth, and boil for two hours. Remove the cloth and boil for two hours. Remove the cloth and crust, put a napkin on a dish, set the bones upright, and serve with dry toast. The marrow can be scooped out and spread on the toast with a sprinkling of pepper and salt, before sending to table; but it is so likely to get cold, that we suggest the above method. Marrow bones are bought generally with silver-side of the round of beef, and weighted with the meat. (See also BEEF MARROW BONES.)
A Victorian service dish rather than a composed one: the bone is the vessel, the marrow is the food, and the whole point is getting it to table hot. A few things in the text need translating.
- The printer's errorThe line "Remove the cloth and boil for two hours" appears twice. The intended sequence is a single two-hour boil, then unwrap, remove the flour crust and serve.
- The flour-and-water pasteThis is a luting paste, not something to eat. Its only job is to seal the sawn ends so the marrow does not melt out into the water. Mix it stiff, about two parts flour to one of water, and press it firmly over each cut face before the cloth goes on.
- Boiling timeTwo hours is far more than marrow needs and will render much of it to liquid fat even behind a seal. Modern practice is 15-20 minutes in simmering water for sawn sections, or 15-20 minutes roasted at 450F, which is now the more usual treatment and gives a better flavour.
- Getting the bones sawnMarrow bones are the leg bones, cut into pieces roughly 2-3 inches long. A band saw does this cleanly; it is not practical work for a home kitchen. Ask the butcher for centre-cut sections, either crosswise for the upright service described here or split lengthwise.
- Silver-side and the roundSilverside is the outer cut of the beef round, a British butchery term still in use. "Weighted with the meat" appears to mean the bones were weighed and paid for along with the joint, which is presumably why a household book treats them as an economical extra course.
- Serving uprightThe napkin on the dish is functional: it stops the bones sliding and soaks up drips. Stand the sections cut-side up so the marrow can be dug out at table with a long thin spoon or the handle of a teaspoon.
- Why not spread it in the kitchenThe author is right. Marrow fat sets and dulls very quickly once it leaves heat, so toast spread in the kitchen arrives greasy and cold. Send hot dry toast alongside and let each person spread their own.
- YieldAllow one to two sections per person as a savoury course. Coarse salt and plenty of black pepper are the whole seasoning; a little parsley and lemon is a later addition, not part of this recipe.
Marrow bones sit in an old English line of "savoury" dishes served at the end of dinner rather than the beginning, alongside anchovy toast and devilled kidneys, and they were eaten with a special narrow marrow spoon that appears in Georgian and Victorian silver services. Their presence in the cookery literature reflects a familiar household logic, the same that lies behind the note about silverside: a book aimed at middle-class kitchens made a point of turning the bones into a course fit for the dining room rather than the stockpot. Marrow is often said to have been a particular favourite of Queen Victoria, though the claim is rarely sourced. The dish fell out of fashion for most of the twentieth century and returned through restaurant cooking, where it is now nearly always roasted rather than boiled in a cloth.