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Sirloin of Beef
Choose, in the first place, a well-covered sirloin, not weighing more than twenty or twenty-four pounds--a large piece is never well roasted; the time which it requires causes the outside to be too much done, while the middle remains quite raw. The meat must be covered for one hour only with paper, to prevent its taking too much colour. It is necessary to observe that for large pieces the fire must not be too sharp, or the meat will be burned before it is warmed through. Just before you take it off the spit spread some fine salt over it, and send it up very hot with gravy only. This joint is often spoiled for the next day's use by an injudicious mode of carving. If you object to the outside cut, take the brown off, and help yourself to the next; by thus cutting it only on one side, you preserve the gravy in the meat, and the goodly appearance likewise; by cutting it, on the contrary, across the middle of the joint, all the gravy runs out, and it remains dry and void of substance, besides exhibiting a most unseemly aspect when brought to table a second time.
This is a spit-roasting instruction rather than a measured recipe, and almost all of it translates to an oven once you scale the joint down. The paragraph on carving is the part most worth keeping.
- The joint itselfA British sirloin of this period is the whole bone-in loin, closer to what an American butcher sells as a short loin or bone-in strip roast. Twenty pounds is banquet scale; a 4-6 lb bone-in piece of the same cut behaves the same way and will feed roughly eight to ten.
- Spit to ovenWith no spit, sear the joint hard in a hot pan or at 450F for 15 minutes, then drop to 325F and roast fat side up on a rack. The author's warning about a sharp fire is the same point as not roasting a large piece at high heat throughout.
- Temperature, not timeIgnore minutes per pound and use a thermometer in the thickest part away from bone: 125F for rare, 135F for medium rare, pulling it 5F early to allow for carryover. This is the single change that solves the burnt-outside, raw-middle problem the recipe opens with.
- The paperThe recipe simply covers the meat with paper for the first hour, to keep it from taking too much colour; foil serves the same purpose today. Tent it loosely if the fat cap is colouring too fast, then remove it to finish browning.
- SaltingThe recipe adds salt only just before the joint comes off the spit; no reason is given, though salt drawn to the surface does hinder browning. In an oven, salting the surface generously several hours ahead, or the night before, gives better seasoning and a drier, better-browning crust.
- "Gravy only"This means the unthickened pan juices and the blood-and-fat drippings caught beneath the joint, not a flour-based sauce. Pour off the fat, deglaze the tin with a little stock or red wine, and serve it as it is.
- RestingThe recipe sends the joint up "very hot" straight from the fire. Rest a modern roast 20-30 minutes under loose foil and far less juice escapes at the first cut.
- The carving pointCutting from one end and working across, rather than opening the joint in the middle, is still sound for a bone-in roast served twice. It keeps the cut face small and the remaining meat intact for the next day.
Roast sirloin was the English national dish in caricature as well as in fact, and what this passage teaches is technique rather than any list of ingredients. The scale tells you who the book was addressing: a twenty-pound joint belongs to a household with a spit, a dripping pan and a fire large enough to roast in front of, and to a table where the same joint reappears cold or hashed for days afterwards. Hence the unusual amount of space given to carving, which in the period was a gentleman's accomplishment taught in its own manuals. The folk etymology deriving "sirloin" from a king knighting a loin of beef is charming and untrue; the word comes from the French sur longe, the cut above the loin. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery appeared in the late Victorian decades, just as closed ranges were displacing open-fire roasting, which is why advice about spits and papering sits alongside kitchens that would soon have ovens instead.