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Beef, Shin of, Stewed
Saw the bone into many pieces and put it into a stewpan, with sufficient water to cover it; bring it to a boil and take off the scum, this must be done thoroughly, and the meat drawn aside to simmer; add to it some celery cut into pieces, one good-sized onion, twelve back peppercorns, a bunch of sweet herbs, three or four small carrots, and the same of cloves, or about half a tea-spoonful of allspice; season with pepper and salt, and let the whole stew very gently for four hours; boil some carrots and turnips separately, cut them into shapes, and serve with the meat. Probable cost, 7d. per pound. Sufficient for seven or eight persons.
A plain Victorian braise built on the cheapest useful cut on the carcass. Nothing here is difficult, but a few of the instructions and one of the quantities need translating.
- The cutShin is the foreshank, full of connective tissue and marrow bone. Ask the butcher to saw the bone into two- or three-inch lengths; a domestic saw will not do it cleanly and the splinters end up in the pot.
- Skim before anything elseThe hinge of the dish. Bring it to a boil and take off every trace of grey scum before you add a single vegetable, or the aromatics trap it and the broth stays cloudy and muddy-tasting. Once skimmed, the pot should never boil again — a bare shiver at the surface for the full four hours.
- "Back peppercorns"A misprint for black peppercorns. Twelve is right for a pot this size.
- "The same of cloves"Genuinely ambiguous, but read against the alternative of half a teaspoon of allspice it means three or four cloves, not three or four small quantities. Err low; cloves dominate a beef broth quickly.
- Sweet herbsA bouquet garni: parsley stalks, thyme, a bay leaf, tied so it can be lifted out. Tie the peppercorns and cloves in with it if you would rather not fish them out later.
- Four hours is not an exaggerationShin needs that long at a bare simmer to convert its collagen. Test with a fork rather than a clock — the meat should fall from the bone and the liquid should feel slightly sticky on the lips.
- Two sets of vegetablesThe carrots, celery and onion in the pot are there to flavour the broth and will be spent by the end. The carrots and turnips "cut into shapes" are cooked separately so they arrive intact and coloured; discard the first lot or press them through a sieve to thicken the gravy.
- Cost and yield7d. per pound is pre-decimal, from a time when shin sold for appreciably less than steak. The seven or eight servings presumably assume a shin of a few pounds bone-in, served with bread or potatoes.
Cassell's was a household dictionary rather than a chef's book, and its entries carried a probable cost per pound for readers shopping to a tight budget. Shin was among the cheapest beef in the Victorian butcher's shop, and it demanded what a busy kitchen with an unreliable range could rarely give it: four unhurried hours over a low fire. The technique here — cold water, hard boil, scrupulous skim, then a simmer that never returns to the boil — is a common nineteenth-century English approach to tough jointed cuts, and it has much in common with pot-au-feu across the Channel, with the boiled vegetables cut into neat shapes and added at the end so that the plate looks composed rather than merely thrifty. The instruction to saw the bone into many pieces is about marrow and gelatine: more cut surface means more of both released into the liquor, which is what gives this stew its body without any flour.