A man wants to cook a fancy meal for his wife, so he makes his mother’s recipe for beef roast. Before putting the roast into the oven, he cuts off the end. His wife asks him why he did that.
“I dunno,” he says. “My mom always did that. I think it has to do with the meat cooking more evenly.”
“But that’s a very expensive cut of meat,” says the wife, “and you just threw away a good piece of it!”
So they call the mother. The son asks, “Mom, when you make beef roast, why do you always cut off the end?”
“I’m not sure,” she says. “My mother always did that. I think it was a superstition she had from the old country.”
So they call the grandmother. “Grandma, when you made beef roast, why did you always cut off the end?”
“This probably isn’t a problem for you,” she replies, “but my pan was very small.”
