Roast and Baked Meats

The upper classes in the wealthy England of the past could afford not only plenty of meat, but the best. This was just as well, since the Englishman has always preferred his meat roast and only the best and most expensive cuts roast well. Cheaper cuts which can be boiled or stewed or braised are un-eatably tough, hard or stringy when quick dry heat is applied to them as in roasting or grilling. Almost equally important, the rich supported vast households and the joints they roasted were as large as the animals would provide or as their spits would carry. In a small household this last could be a problem. Pepys, who was very much interested in food and in entertaining, wrote in 1653: