Grandma’s English Recipes

The Sunday roast is perhaps the most common feature of English cooking. The Sunday dinner traditionally includes roast potatoes accompanying a roasted joint of meat such as roast beef, lamb , or a roast chicken and assorted vegetables, themselves generally roasted or boiled and served with a thick gravy. Yorkshire pudding and gravy is now often served as an accompaniment to the main course, although it was originally served first as a “filler”. (The practice of serving a roast dinner on a Sunday is related to the elaborate preparation required, and to the housewife’s practice of performing the weekly wash on a Monday, when the cold remains of the roast made an easily-assembled meal).A particularly elaborate roast dinner is eaten at Christmas, with almost every detail rigidly specified by tradition. Since its wide-spread availability after World War II the most popular Christmas roast is turkey, superseding the goose of Dickens’s time. Game meats such as venison which were traditionally the domain of higher classes are occasionally also eaten by those wishing to experiment with a wider choice of foods, due to their promotion by Celebrity Chefs, such as Antony Worrall Thompson, although it is not generally eaten regularly in the average household.

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6 potatoes
vegetable oil, as needed
3 onions
4-6 pounds beef, lamb, or pork roast

Peel potatoes and cut into large chunks. If roast is very lean, roll potatoes in vegetable oil. Place meat in baking pan and roast as you prefer. About 11/2 hours before meat is cooked, add potatoes and onions to pan. Stir with spoon and cover them with pan juices. Cook until meat is tender and potatoes are done

4 large potatoes
1 cup milk or sour cream
1/4 cup butter
salt and pepper to taste

Peel potatoes and cut into quarters. Place in a large saucepan with water to cover. Bring to a boil, lower heat, cook for about 25 to 30 minutes or until tender. Drain well. Place potatoes in mixing bowl of electric mixer and beat until smooth. Heat milk or cream in small saucepan and add to potatoes along with butter, salt and pepper. Beat until smooth and fluffy.

3 cups sifted flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1 cup milk

Sift flour and salt together. Beat eggs until ligght and add sifted ingredients.Add milk gradually and beat two minutes with rotary egg beater. Prepare pudding to pour into pan 30 minutes before beef has finished roasting Place beef to one side of roasting pan and pour off small about of fat.Grease an oblong pan with drippings. Pour Yorkshire Pudding mixture into pan . Return to oven and cook about 30 minutes.Cut into squares and serve with roast beef.