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Deviled Bones
Select bones which have not been quite stripped of meat and mix with a little dry mustard and salt and make up with a lump of butter. Rub this well into and over the bones, and dust lightly with cayenne pepper and broil. Serve with mushrooms fried in butter.
A savoury made from the carcass of a roast, and one of the shortest recipes in Oscar's book. It assumes you know what a devilled crust should look like, so the useful work here is filling in the quantities and the heat.
- What "bones" meansRib bones from a standing rib roast, a turkey or chicken carcass broken into joints, or lamb riblets — anything with a ragged half-inch of meat still clinging. The meat is already cooked; broiling only crisps and colours it.
- The devil pasteOscar gives no quantities. For the bones off one roast, something like 3 tablespoons of softened butter worked with 1 tablespoon dry mustard (English mustard powder suits it), 1 teaspoon salt and a light dusting of cayenne will do. Other devil mixtures of the period often include Worcestershire; Oscar does not.
- Rub it in, not onThe instruction to rub it "well into and over" is the hinge. Push the paste into every crevice where meat meets bone with your fingers — a surface smear slides off under the broiler and burns on the pan instead of the meat.
- Broiler heat and timeThe recipe says only "broil." A hot broiler with the rack a few inches from the element, and a few minutes a side, is enough: the meat is already cooked, so you are only crisping it. Stop while the edges are dark but before the dry mustard turns acrid.
- Cayenne restraint"Dust lightly" is meant literally. A heavy hand at the start reads as harsh rather than hot on the plate.
- The mushroomsThe recipe asks only for mushrooms fried in butter. Small white or cremini, halved, fried hard in a single layer until browned and salted at the end, will do.
- Yield and servingNo yield is given; the bones from one roast will stretch to two to four as a savoury or late supper. Being bones, they are eaten with the fingers, so napkins and a bowl for the stripped bones are worth putting out.
Devilling — coating meat with mustard, cayenne and butter and putting it under fierce heat — was a British habit that ran through the nineteenth century, and "devilled bones" was among its most frugal forms: the rib bones left after a roast had been carved were seasoned hard and grilled, and the dish has a long association with late suppers and club dining. In cookery the term is recorded from the later eighteenth century, "devilled" meaning simply fiery. Oscar Tschirky's book, from a hotel whose dining room followed London fashions closely, includes it alongside the other chafing-dish and savoury items, and it reflects a kitchen economy that found a second use for a carved carcass.