Beef Stew
2 lbs. lean beef from round, or 2 1/2 lbs. if there is a bone 1 qt. of water 2 cups potatoes cut in 1/4 inch slices Turnip, Carrot} 1/2 cup each cut in 1/2 inch cubes 1/2 small onion cut in thin slices 3 tablespoons Gold Medal flour Salt and pepper Wipe meat with wet cloth, separate meat, bone and fat; try out some of the fat in frying pan, cut meat into 1 1/2 inch cubes, sprinkle with salt and pepper and dredge with Gold Medal flour. Sear the meat in the hot fat, stirring constantly. When all surfaces are well browned put in the kettle; cover and let boil up once, skim and then simmer for two and one-half hours. Add carrot, turnip and onion the last hour of cooking. Parboil the potatoes and add to stew fifteen minutes before taking from the fire. Remove bone, large pieces of fat, and skim; thicken with 3 tablespoons of Gold Medal flour diluted with enough cold water to pour easily. Let the stew come to a boil again and cook ten minutes.
Mutton, lamb or veal can be cooked in this manner. When veal is used, try out 2 slices of pork, as there will not be much fat on the meat. Lamb and mutton should have some of the fat put aside and butter substituted.
A straightforward braise that needs almost no translation, though two details in the ingredient list are misleading and worth sorting out before you start.
- The flour is listed once but used twiceThree tablespoons are called for, yet the method dredges the meat with flour and thickens the finished stew with three more. Set aside about 6 tablespoons total: roughly 3 for dredging the cubes, 3 for the final slurry.
- A quart of water is not muchFour cups will barely cover 2 lb of beef cubes in a wide pot. Use a heavy pot just large enough to hold the meat snugly, keep the lid on, and check once or twice that the liquid has not dropped below the meat.
- "Try out" means renderCut the fat trimmings small and melt them in the pan over moderate heat until you have a few tablespoons of clear fat, then discard the browned solids before searing. If the round is trimmed lean, as most supermarket round is, use 2 tablespoons of oil instead.
- Simmer, do not boilThe instruction to "let boil up once, skim, then simmer" is the hinge. The single boil brings scum to the surface for skimming; after that hold the liquid at a bare tremble, around 185F. A rolling boil for two and a half hours will squeeze the round dry and stringy.
- Timing the vegetablesRoot vegetables go in for the final hour, which is generous by modern taste — carrot and turnip cut in half-inch cubes are done in 25 to 30 minutes and will collapse over an hour. Add them 30 to 40 minutes before the end if you want them intact.
- Parboiling the potatoesBoil the slices 5 minutes in salted water and drain before adding. Cooking them in the stew from raw releases enough starch to cloud and thicken the broth on its own, which is presumably why the book keeps them separate.
- The final thickeningWhisk the flour into cold water until smooth, stir it into the simmering stew, and give it the full ten minutes the recipe asks for. Less than that and the gravy tastes of raw flour.
- YieldServes about 4 as a main course.
Gold Medal Flour's cook books were published by the Washburn-Crosby Company of Minneapolis, the milling firm that later became General Mills, and their purpose was frankly commercial: the brand is named at both points flour appears, once as a dredge and once as a thickener. The dish itself is older than the pamphlet. Searing floured meat in rendered fat before liquid goes in is a common nineteenth-century American approach to cheap cuts, and beef from the round — worked muscle, lean, tough, inexpensive — is exactly what long moist cooking was meant for. The closing note that mutton, lamb or veal "can be cooked in this manner" reflects a period habit of teaching a method rather than a single dish, and the aside about frying out two slices of pork with veal is a reminder of how often pork fat stood in for other cooking fat.