To Roast Meat
Wipe the meat with a damp cloth, place in a dripping pan or double roaster, dust with salt, pepper and flour, allowing from one to two tablespoons of flour to sift on the bottom of the pan, and put in a hot oven, 375 to 400 degrees F. to brown. This takes from fifteen to twenty minutes. Pour a little hot water into the pan containing two or three tablespoons Mazola and one-half tablespoon of Karo, Blue Label. Baste the meat with this every fifteen minutes, until done. Make a gravy from the drippings in the pan, adding a cup of boiling water to each half cup of drippings. If necessary, thicken the gravy with a little Argo or Kingsford's Cornstarch blended with cold water. Roast Beef-Allow fifteen minutes to the pound, and fifteen minutes additional (while the meat is browning), for rare roast beef. If liked medium done, allow twenty minutes to the pound. Roast Lamb or Mutton-Allow twenty minutes to the pound and twenty minutes additional.
Roast Pork and Veal-Same as lamb.
Roast Chicken, Turkey, Goose or Duck-Prepare as usual, stuff, dress and roast from eighteen to twenty minutes to the pound, allowing twenty minutes additional. Start the bird, breast down. Turn during the cooking.
A general roasting method from a corn-products promotional book, with the timings for each meat appended. The technique is sound; only the doneness rules need replacing.
- Use a thermometer, not the clockMinutes per pound is a rough guide that ignores shape, bone and starting temperature. Pull beef at 125-130F for rare, 135F for medium; lamb the same; pork at 145F with a rest; poultry at 165F in the thigh. The book's twenty minutes per pound for pork reflects an era of trichinella anxiety and will give you a dry roast.
- The brand namesMazola is corn oil, Karo Blue Label was the light grade of corn syrup, and Argo and Kingsford's are cornstarch. Any neutral oil, light corn syrup and cornstarch stand in exactly.
- Why the Karo is thereHalf a tablespoon of corn syrup in the basting liquid is there for browning, not sweetness. It is a genuine trick, though the same effect comes free if you simply do not let the pan liquid drown the surface of the meat.
- Dripping pan or double roasterA double roaster is a covered two-piece enamel or tin pan, effectively a lidded roasting pan. Use an open low-sided roasting pan with a rack; a covered vessel steams the exterior and undoes the initial browning.
- The flour on the pan bottomOne to two tablespoons sifted under the meat toasts in the fat and gives the gravy its colour and body. Watch it during the hot browning stage, as it scorches quickly at 400F.
- Two-stage ovenThe 375-400F is stated only for the initial browning of fifteen to twenty minutes. The recipe never says what heat to hold afterwards; drop to 325-350F for the remainder.
- BastingEvery fifteen minutes means opening the oven a dozen times on a large roast, which costs more heat than the basting gains. Twice or three times is plenty, and skip it entirely on poultry you want crisp-skinned.
- Gravy proportionsA cup of boiling water to each half cup of drippings gives a thin gravy by modern taste. Pour off most of the fat first, keep the browned residue, and thicken with cornstarch slurried in cold water, about a tablespoon per cup of liquid.
- Breast down, then turnedStill good advice for lean birds, as it keeps the breast in the juices. Turn it upright for the last third so the skin browns, and use cloths or wooden spoons rather than a fork, which drains the meat.
This page comes from one of the cookbooks issued by American corn refiners in the early twentieth century, when Mazola oil, Karo syrup and Argo cornstarch were all products of the same industry and needed to be argued into kitchens that ran on butter, lard and wheat flour. That is why a plain roasting method names three brands: the book's purpose was to show corn oil basting a roast and corn syrup helping it brown, alongside the cornstarch thickener that was already familiar. The roasting instructions themselves are entirely conventional for the period, including the minutes-per-pound tables that every general cookbook printed before household meat thermometers became common in the middle of the century. The direction to start a bird breast down survives in modern practice.