Buttocks of Beef for everyone

In “A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes” by Charles Elme Francatelli, written in 1852, we get a recipe for Boiled Beef.

This is an economical dinner, especially where there are many mouths to feed. Buy a few pounds of either salt brisket, thick or thin flank, or buttock of beef; these pieces are always to be had at a low rate. Let us suppose you have bought a piece of salt beef for a Sunday’s dinner, weighing about five pounds, at 6 1/2d. per pound, that would come to 2s. 8 1/2d.; two pounds of common flour, 4d., to be made into suet pudding or dumplings, and say 8 1/2d. for cabbages, parsnips, and potatoes; altogether 3s. 9d. This would produce a substantial dinner for ten persons in family, and would, moreover, as children do not require much meat when they have pudding, admit of there being enough left to help out the next day’s dinner, with potatoes.

Yes, I remember asking my mom if I could have some more beef and she said, “You kids have your pudding! You don’t get any more beef! Beef is expensive, son. It’s for adults. You get the one piece we allowed you to have.”

“But, mom, our plates were mostly cabbage and parsnips, not beef.”

“And lucky you were to get the cabbage, son. You think cabbage is cheap. I had to go to the grocery on Discount Cabbage Days just to get what you had tonight. How about a little gratitude?”

“How about a little beef?” I said.

She sent me to my room.