The Art of
Roasting
By Rod Michael
With grilling season, a distant past, it ' s time to think about some roasting adventures. We all enjoy the aromas that fill a kitchen as the oven roasts one of your favorite dishes. As a child, it always seemed that, the Sunday dinner was the one meal that we all looked forward to. It could have been a plump roasted chicken, my mom’ s favorite rack of lamb or that Thanksgiving Turkey we all coveted. The comfort that a lipsmacking meal brings is unequaled. So, let’ s take a journey through roasting history.
Roasting began in prehistoric times, when man first stuck a piece of meat on a stick and held it over the fire. Spit roasting fowl and game was common place in ancient societies. In the Middle Ages, hunting was a prime occupation of the noble classes and the game was usually roasted on a spit. Suckling pigs were prime candidates for the spit. Beef, believe it or not, was not. It was considered vulgar, because cattle didn’ t have to be hunted. It wasn’ t until the 17th century that roast beef became widely accepted in Europe. Roasting was, the most prestigious way to cook meat. Roasting so inspired people that the oldest gastronomic society was founded in Paris in 1248 by masters in the art of roasting geese. The society was known as the Confrerie de la Chaines des Rotisseurs,( The Brotherhood of the Chain of the Roasters). The object of the guild was to perpetuate the quality standards befitting the royal table of King Louis IX, King of France. The king loved roasted meats for the same reason people do to this day. Properly roasted meat is tender, delicious, appetizing and easier to digest than meat cooked by other methods. Oven cooking as we recognize today began during the late 18th century in England and America. Ben Franklin with the invention of the Franklin Stove can be given partial credit for closed stove cooking. Fuel was growing scarce and open heating and cooking required a lot of fuel. The new stove was to economize fuel and homemakers had to learn a new way to cook. Scholars of the day decried over the loss of the open hearth. They said it was a sign of moral decay and a threat to family unity! The British food historian Dorothy Hartley writes,“ Undeniably, much good English cooking, perhaps the best of English cooking, was lost when the oven door went shut on the English roast and turned it into a funeral feast of baked meats!”
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