Casserole Of
3 Pounds Veal, Lamb or Beef, Freed from the Bone 1 Teaspoonful Sugar 1 Medium-sized Onion 3 Cupfuls Boiling Water 3 Tablespoonfuls Flour Grating Lemon Rind (optional) 1 Teaspoonful Salt 1/3 Teaspoonful Pepper 3 Tablespoonfuls Snowdrift 1 Cupful Rich Milk or Sifted, Canned Tomato
This is an ingredient list from a shortening manufacturer's booklet; the method was either printed elsewhere on the page or assumed known. What it describes is a plain braise, and it can be reconstructed with confidence.
- Snowdrift is shorteningSnowdrift was a cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the Southern Cotton Oil Company (in its earlier years a compound fat rather than a fully hydrogenated one). Substitute an equal amount of any neutral solid shortening, or use butter or oil if you do not mind the flavour change.
- "Casserole" means the potIn a book of this vintage the casserole is a heavy lidded vessel, and a casserole of meat is meat browned and then stewed slowly in it, on the stove or in a low oven. It is not a layered baked dish.
- The method the list impliesMelt the shortening, brown the meat cut in pieces along with the sliced onion, stir in the flour to make a roux, then add the boiling water, salt, pepper, sugar and lemon rind. Cover and cook gently until tender, and stir in the milk or sieved tomato at the end.
- Oven temperatureIf you braise it in the oven rather than on the burner, 300-325F for two to two and a half hours suits three pounds of veal or beef. Lamb shoulder will be done nearer the two-hour mark.
- The pepper quantityThe original reads "1/ Teaspoonful Pepper" — a broken fraction. Half a teaspoon is the likely reading and is right for this volume of liquid.
- Rich milk"Rich milk" meant unskimmed milk with the cream still on it. Whole milk with a splash of cream, or half-and-half, matches it. Add it off the boil, or the sauce may curdle.
- Sifted canned tomatoSifted means pressed through a sieve to remove seeds and skin, not sifted dry. Canned tomato purée or passata is the direct equivalent, and it makes a noticeably different dish from the milk version — one gives a pale gravy, the other a red one.
- YieldThree pounds of boneless meat with three cups of liquid serves six to eight with potatoes or rice.
Snowdrift was one of the early branded cottonseed-oil cooking fats, promoted hard in the years when American cooks were being persuaded away from lard and butter, and this booklet exists to sell it — hence the three tablespoons of Snowdrift standing in a list where an older cookbook would simply have said "a piece of butter the size of an egg." The dish itself is older than the brand: a plain braise of shoulder meat with onion and a flour thickening, finished either white with milk or red with tomato, was standard household cookery on both sides of the Atlantic. The grating of lemon rind, marked optional, may be a survival of the older English habit of lifting a heavy brown stew with something sharp. Canned tomato appearing as a routine alternative to milk marks the period too — by the 1900s tinned tomatoes were cheap and widely available in American pantries in a way they had not been a generation earlier.