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BEEF, STEWED (Irish method)
Divide two pounds of beef into small pieces--any part will do--and put them into an earthenware pan with a tight-fitting cover, with a pint and a half of water, two or three onions, a carrot cut up, and a little salt and pepper. Stew all together in the oven for an hour or more. Lay on the top some peeled potatoes, cover up and put it back into the oven for an hour and a half more, when the potatoes will be reduced to a mash, and the stew will be, as all Irish stews are, excellent. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for four or five persons. (See IRISH STEW.)
A long, low oven-braise that asks almost nothing of the cook beyond patience and a lidded pot. The potatoes are added late and deliberately overcooked, since their collapse is what thickens the gravy.
- Oven temperatureNo temperature is given; the recipe says only "in the oven." A slow oven, around 300F, suits the two and a half hours indicated; anything hotter will boil the liquid away before the beef gives in.
- The potAn earthenware pan with a tight cover is a lidded casserole or Dutch oven. Enamelled cast iron works, though glazed stoneware holds the gentler heat the recipe was written around.
- Cut of beef"Any part will do" is optimistic. Two and a half hours of moist heat suits shin, chuck, brisket or skirt; lean rump or sirloin will simply go dry and stringy.
- Liquid levelA pint and a half in Imperial measure (20 fl oz to the pint) is 30 fl oz, roughly 850 ml or a little over 3 1/2 US cups.
- The potatoesThey go in peeled and sit on top rather than submerged, and are meant to break down into the gravy; the recipe does not say whether to leave them whole or cut them. Waxy potatoes resist this; use a floury variety such as russet or Maris Piper.
- SeasoningSalt and pepper only, and "a little" at that. The recipe calls for no browning of the meat; it goes in raw with the water.
- Yield and costFour to five servings. The "probable cost, 2s" is two shillings in pre-decimal British money; the book gives a probable cost for its recipes as a matter of routine.
The recipe cross-refers to the book's own entry for Irish stew -- the same idea worked in an oven rather than over a fire. Irish stew proper is generally traced to mutton, onion and potato cooked in one pot, with the potato doing the thickening in place of flour; substituting beef, as here, makes this an adaptation rather than the Irish original. The economy is plain: two pounds of any cut, three vegetables, water, and no butter or stock at all, at a probable cost of two shillings for four or five people.