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Roast-Beef
(Arrosto) Although roast-beef is not an Italian dish, still it is prepared in a peculiar way by the Italians, and hence this recipe finds its place here.
To obtain a good roast-beef not less than two pounds ought to be cooked on a strong fire. It ought to be covered with good olive oil and finally with cup of soup stock which with the oil and the juice from the meat will form a rich gravy, Salt it only when it is half cooked and do it moderately, because the beef is already tasty by itself.
Put it on the fire half an hour before the soup is served and the meal begins. This will be sufficient if the piece is not very big. To ascertain the cooking prick it in the bigger part with a thin larding-pin, but not often, in order not to allow too much juice to escape. The juice must neither be of the color of the blood nor too dark.
If baked it is to be seasoned with salt, oil and a piece of butter, surrounded by raw potatoes peeled. Pour in the kettle a cup of broth or of water.
If you do not like cold roast beef, cut it into slices and warm with butter and brown stock or tomato sauce. 129
A compact set of instructions for pan- or oven-roasting a small joint, written when cooks judged doneness by the color of the juice. The method is sound; the guidance on timing and quantity needs filling in.
- The two-pound minimum is the pointThe two-pound minimum -- The recipe insists on not less than two pounds, though it does not say why; a smaller joint tends to dry out before the outside browns. Sirloin, top rump or a short rib roast all suit; ask for a piece of even thickness so it cooks uniformly.
- "A strong fire" and "if baked"The first instruction is roasting over high heat with the fat and stock in the pan; "if baked" means the oven. The book gives no temperatures; a modern hot oven, around 425-450F, is the usual equivalent for a joint this size.
- The missing measurement"Finally with cup of soup stock" has lost a word in the translation; read it as one cup, added to the pan after the meat has taken color, not at the start. Added too early it steams the surface and no crust forms.
- Half an hour is a starting point, not a ruleThirty minutes will bring a two-pound joint to rare only if it went in at room temperature and the heat is genuinely high. Judge by internal temperature instead: 125-130F for rare, 135F for medium rare, with a ten-minute rest before carving.
- Pricking versus a thermometerThe larding-pin test is asking you to read the juice: pink and clear is rare, brown is overdone, red means keep going. An instant-read thermometer answers the same question with one small hole rather than several.
- Salting at the halfway markThe recipe's stated reason for going easy on salt is that the beef "is already tasty by itself"; it does not explain the timing, though the fear that early salting draws out juice was a common one. Current practice runs the other way, salting the surface an hour ahead or the night before so it penetrates and the exterior dries for better browning. Either way the instruction to be moderate holds, since the pan gravy concentrates as it reduces.
- The potatoesPeeled raw potatoes laid around the joint will take roughly as long as the meat in a hot oven only if cut to about 1 1/2 inches. Turn them in the oil once so they brown rather than steam in the cup of broth.
- Yield and the leftoversTwo pounds serves four generously. The closing note is a genuinely good one: reheat cold slices gently in butter with brown stock or tomato sauce rather than in a hot oven, which would drive them to gray.
This book, published in English in 1919, belongs to a wave of Italian cookery writing that followed Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene (1891), and the frank admission that roast beef "is not an Italian dish" is very much in that spirit. Artusi too gave recipes for roast beef as an English borrowing, and the naturalizing is done here entirely with olive oil in place of the dripping or butter an English or French cook would have reached for, plus a cup of brodo from the soup already on the stove. The instruction to start the roast half an hour before the soup goes out tells you the shape of the meal: brodo or a minestra first, the roast to follow. The word entered Italian as an anglicism, adapted more or less phonetically.