Ragout of Beef
For six pounds of the round, take half dozen ripe tomatoes, cut up with two or three onions in a vessel with a tight cover, add half a dozen cloves, a stick of cinnamon, and a little whole black pepper; cut gashes in the meat, and stuff then with half pound of fat salt pork, cut into square bits; place the meat on the other ingredients, and pour over them half a cup of vinegar and a cup of water; cover tightly, and bake in a moderate oven ; cook slowly four or five hours, and, when about half done, salt to taste. When done, take out the meat, strain the gravy through a colander and thicken with flour.-Mrs. D. W. R., Washington City.
A pot roast in all but name: six pounds of beef round larded with salt pork and braised over tomatoes and onions for the better part of an afternoon. The method is sound; only the vessel and a few proportions need translating.
- Moderate ovenRead that as 325-350F. For a braise this long, the lower end is better — the liquid should barely tremble, not bubble.
- The vessel"A vessel with a tight cover" means a heavy Dutch oven or lidded roasting pan. A loose lid loses the little liquid there is; if yours does not seal, lay foil under it.
- The liquid is deliberately scantHalf a cup of vinegar and a cup of water for six pounds of meat looks wrong until you remember the tomatoes and onions collapse into juice. Do not add more water at the start; check at two hours and top up only if the pot is drying.
- Larding with salt porkRound is lean and would go dry over five hours. Cut deep slits with a narrow knife and push in the pork batons — this is the step that makes the dish work, and skipping it gives you a dry roast.
- Salt late, and for a reasonThe salt pork releases plenty on its own. Tasting at the halfway point, as directed, is the right call; salting at the start risks an oversalted gravy once it reduces.
- Whole spicesSix cloves and a cinnamon stick in a pot this size read as warmth rather than as spice cake. Tie them with the peppercorns in cheesecloth if you would rather not fish them out of the colander.
- Thickening the gravyAfter straining, whisk a flour-and-fat roux or a slurry into the simmering liquid and cook it two or three minutes so the flour loses its raw taste. How much strained juice you end up with depends on the tomatoes and how tightly the pot sealed.
- Doneness and yieldFour to five hours at this temperature takes round well past medium into fork-tender braise territory, which is the intent. Six pounds serves ten to twelve, and it slices better after resting twenty minutes.
This entry carries its contributor's initials and city in the usual way for a compiled community cookbook — "Mrs. D. W. R., Washington City," the older name for Washington, D.C. The French word ragoût properly means a stew of cut-up meat, though nineteenth-century American household books often applied it more loosely to slow-braised meat with a made gravy, and here it covers a single large piece of round. The larding with salt pork is the older technique showing through: before reliably marbled beef and refrigeration, lean cuts were often threaded with fat to keep them edible through hours of cooking. Tomatoes in a braise like this were a relatively recent habit in American kitchens, having moved from suspicion toward commonplace over the preceding few decades.