Dinner — roast course (central relevé of the evening meal)
Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding
FestiveDocumented🧂 🍄moyen1 h 30
A perfectly roasted cut of beef, golden crust and pink center, served with puffed Yorkshire puddings baked in dripping and a rich gravy.
Why this dish? Roast beef is the national British dish and the centerpiece of the aristocratic dinner. In Ada's house, as in any home of her rank, the Sunday roast and formal dinners revolved around this cut of beef, a symbol of Victorian prosperity, served with its inseparable Yorkshire pudding.
Here, without dispute, is the dish that crowns our table when we entertain. The beef must roast slowly, basted in its own fat, until the crust sings under the knife and the heart remains pink. The little puddings require a blazing oven: the batter leaps up as if by magic, which I have always found most pleasing for a mind that loves fine mechanisms. Carve before your guests, I pray you: the spectacle is worth the flavor.
Ingredients
- •Beef roasting joint (rib) — a fine piece (meat)
- •Beef dripping (suet) — as needed (cooking fat)
- •Flour — one pound (pudding batter)
- •Eggs — a few (pudding batter)
- •Milk — one pint (pudding batter)
- •Salt and pepper — to taste (seasoning)
- •English mustard — for serving (condiment)
How it was made : In the 19th century, beef was spitted and roasted before the hearth, slowly turning on the spit, with the collected dripping used to cook the pudding batter placed underneath to catch the juices. Yorkshire pudding was sometimes eaten as a first course, with gravy, to fill up before the meat.
Sources : Mrs Beeton, Book of Household Management (1861) · Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery (19th-century reprints)