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Scotch Rolled Beef
Select a large flank steak weighing as near 3 pounds as possible. Trim off the thin end and lightly score the meat on both sides. Mix together ½ teaspoonful of pepper, 1 scant tablespoonful of salt, 1/4 of a teaspoonful of ground cloves, 1 tablespoonful of sugar, 1 teaspoonful of summer savory and 3 tablespoonfuls of vinegar.
Rub this well into the meat, roll it up and tie with wide tapes. Stand in a cool place over night. Next day lay the roll in a stew-pan, pour over sufficient boiling water to partly cover, and simmer slowly for three hours. In another saucepan brown I heaping tablespoonful of dripping, add 2 tablespoonfuls of flour and brown again.
Stir this into the water in which the meat is cooking, and when thickened and smooth, season to taste. Simmer for another hour, and serve hot or cold.
A collared flank steak, spiced overnight and then simmered gently for four hours. The whole point is low, slow heat: flank is nearly all long-grain muscle and connective tissue, and a rolling boil will squeeze it dry and stringy before the collagen has a chance to melt.
- Size of the flankA 3 lb flank steak was a butcher's whole cut; supermarket flank today usually runs 1½ to 2 lb. Ask for an untrimmed whole flank, or use two overlapped slightly at the seam before rolling.
- Wide tapesCotton tape was sold for exactly this job. Butcher's twine at 1-inch intervals does the same work; avoid anything synthetic, which will melt in a four-hour simmer.
- Stand in a cool place overnightThat means the refrigerator. The salt and vinegar rub is a dry cure of sorts, but it is not a preservative at modern kitchen temperatures, and the meat should be at or below 40°F for the resting period.
- Summer savoryStill sold dried, though rarely stocked; it is peppery and faintly thyme-like. Dried thyme with a pinch of dried marjoram is the closest substitute if you cannot find it.
- DrippingRendered beef fat saved from roasting. Any beef fat or lard will brown the flour well; butter can be used but its milk solids scorch more readily. The aim is a well-browned roux with a nutty smell, which takes several minutes over medium heat.
- Simmer, do not boilWater "partly covering" and a bare shiver at the surface, around 180-190°F. The meat is not done at a time so much as at a texture: a skewer should slide through the roll with no resistance.
- Thickening the potStirring the browned roux directly into the cooking liquid turns the poaching water into gravy for the last hour. Whisk it in off the boil to avoid lumps, and taste for salt only at the end, since the cure has already salted the meat and will leach into the liquid.
- ServingRoughly six to eight portions. Served hot, slice thickly across the roll; served cold, press the tied roll under a weighted plate in the refrigerator overnight and cut thin.
Rolling, spicing and tying a cheap flat cut is the old British technique of collaring — a name often traced to the collar of tape or twine that holds the roll, though the origin of the culinary sense is uncertain — and it appears in English and Scottish household books for centuries, applied to beef, brawn, eel and breast of veal alike. The seasoning here is characteristic of the tradition: salt and vinegar to firm and keep the meat, sugar and cloves for the sweet-spiced note that British cooks long favoured with preserved beef. Flank was among the cheapest cuts on the carcass and one of the most stubborn, which is why it comes attached to a four-hour cooking time; the labour and the fuel are what make it edible. The instruction to serve it cold is not an afterthought — a collared roll pressed and chilled slices cleanly for sandwiches and cold suppers, and would have stretched one piece of beef across several meals.