Stewed Beef
Take a piece of the rump, pound it till tender, lay in an iron vessel previously lined with slices of pork and onions, with a few pepper-corns, dredge it with salt, and baste with melted butter. Cover close, over a good heat, and when it has fried a nice brown, add one pint German cooking wine and as much more good soup stock, and stew it till soft. Before serving, take out the meat, skim off the fat, add a table-spoon of four mixed smooth with broth, add gradually still more broth, strain it through a sieve and turn over the previously dished meat. The meat can be laid for some days before in vinegar, or in a spiced pickle, or be basted with either occasionally instead of lying in it.
This is a braise in the German manner, closer to a mild sauerbraten than to an English pot roast. Nothing in it is difficult, but two lines in the original need translating before you start.
- "A table-spoon of four"A printer's error for flour — one tablespoon, mixed smooth with broth as the recipe directs before it goes near the hot liquid. It is a slurry rather than a roux, and lumps come from adding the broth all at once rather than in stages.
- The iron vesselA heavy Dutch oven with a tight lid, 5 to 7 quarts. The pork slices and onion on the bottom are there to keep the beef off the metal and to give the sauce its body; leave them in for the whole cook and discard or chop them at the end.
- German cooking wineThe book does not define the term; most likely an inexpensive Rhine-type white, dry and sharp. A dry Riesling, Silvaner or any brisk unwooded white does the job. Modern bottles labelled "cooking wine" are salted and should be avoided; the recipe already salts the meat.
- The hinge: keep it below a simmer"Stew it till soft" means a bare tremble, not a boil. Rump worked hard in life and needs 2½ to 3½ hours of gentle heat to convert its collagen; a rolling boil will squeeze the fibres dry and leave the meat stringy no matter how long it goes. On a modern stove the flame is usually too fierce, so move the covered pot to a 325°F oven after browning.
- Pounding the rumpUseful when the beef is a solid 3 to 4 lb piece — it breaks up the surface so the marinade and fat penetrate. It is not a substitute for the long cook. If your butcher sells rump already tied as a roast, a few firm blows with the flat of a heavy knife is plenty.
- Baste, then brown"Cover close, over a good heat, and when it has fried a nice brown" is browning under a lid, which steams as much as it sears. For better colour, brown the meat uncovered in the melted butter and pork fat first, then cover and proceed. The pint of wine and pint of stock should come no more than halfway up the meat.
- The vinegar optionThe final sentence turns the dish into sauerbraten. Two to four days in the refrigerator in wine vinegar with onion, bay, cloves and peppercorns; three days is ample for a rump. "Some days" at 1877 pantry temperature is not advice to follow — keep it cold throughout.
- YieldA 3 u00bd lb rump serves six to eight, with roughly 2 cups of strained sauce. Potato dumplings, buttered noodles or boiled potatoes suit it.
Buckeye Cookery came out of Ohio in 1877, and its meat chapter carries the fingerprints of the state's German-speaking population. The tell here is not the title but the details: pork-lined pot, whole peppercorns, and the closing note that the beef may lie for days in vinegar or spiced pickle, which is the standing definition of Sauerbraten ("sour roast"). The compilers seem to have taken a German household braise, dropped the German name, and filed it under the flatly American heading "Stewed Beef" — a domesticating instinct at work. The technique itself, browning a tough cut in fat and finishing it slowly in an acid liquid, is far older than any national label and was the standard way to make working muscle edible before reliable refrigeration and tender aged beef were available.