E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
Sirloin of Beef.
A corruption of Surloin. (French, surlonge.) La partie du bæuf qui reste après qu’on en a coupé l’épaule et la cuisse. In Queen Elizabeth’s “Progresses,” one of the items mentioned under March 31st, 1573, is a “sorloyne of byf.” Fuller tells us that Henry VIII. jocularly knighted the surloin. If so, James I, could claim neither wit nor originality when, at a banquet given him at HOGTON Tower, near Blackburn, he said, “Bring hither that surloin, sirrah, for ’tis worthy of a more honourable post, being, as I may say, not surloin, but sirloin.”
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“Dining with the Abbot of Reading, he [Henry VIII.] ate so heartily of a loin of beef that the abbot said he would give 1,000 marks for such a stomach. ‘Done!’ said the king, and kept the abbot a prisoner in the Tower, won his 1,000 marks, and knighted the beef.”—See Fuller: Church History, vi. 2, p. 299 (1655).
