Beef Stew
This is best when made of slices cut from an underdone roast, and simmered in any liquor in which meat has been boiled, but if none is at hand, use water instead-just covering the beef.
To a half dozen slices of the usual size, add: 2 tablespoonfuls pepper vinegar. 1 tablespoonful of made mustard. 1 tablespoonful of acid fruit jelly. 1 tablespoonful of butter. 1 teaspoonful salt. 1 teaspoonful celery-seed. 1 saltspoonful black pepper. 1 raw turnip, grated or scraped fine. 1 mashed Irish potato. Add minced onion and parsley. Boil up and serve.
Cold beefsteak or mutton chops, which are always unfit to appear upon the table a second time, are delicious cut up in small pieces and mixed or stewed separately in this way.--Mrs. S.T.
A reheated-meat dish built around a sharp, sweet-sour sauce, thickened not with flour but with grated raw turnip and a mashed potato. The whole thing takes about fifteen minutes once the meat is sliced.
- The hinge: the meat is already cookedThe aim is to warm slices of underdone roast through in the seasoned liquor rather than cook them hard again. The recipe has the slices simmering in the liquor just covered, the seasonings added to that, then "boil up and serve." Long stewing turns underdone roast grey and stringy.
- Pepper vinegarA Southern staple: small hot peppers steeped in cider or white vinegar, used by the spoonful. If you have no bottle going, use 2 tablespoons cider vinegar with a few drops of hot sauce, or vinegar plus a pinch of crushed red pepper.
- Made mustardMustard already mixed with vinegar or water, as opposed to dry mustard powder. Any smooth prepared mustard works; a sharp English or Dijon is closest to what was meant.
- Acid fruit jellyCurrant jelly first, then crabapple, quince or damson. It supplies tartness as much as sweetness, so avoid a bland grape jelly. Redcurrant jelly is still the classic match for beef and mutton.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon. The teaspoon and tablespoon here are close enough to modern ones for this kind of cooking.
- Irish potatoAn ordinary white potato, distinguished in nineteenth-century American books from the sweet potato. Mash it with no milk or butter added; it is there to thicken the liquor.
- Turnip and thickeningThe grated raw turnip half-dissolves in the hot liquid and gives body along with the potato. Grate it fine on a box grater; coarse shreds stay crunchy in the short cooking time.
- Liquid and quantity"Any liquor in which meat has been boiled" means broth from boiling meat; how salty it is depends on what was boiled, so taste before adding the teaspoonful of salt. Beef stock is the modern stand-in, and you need only enough to just cover. Six slices "of the usual size" go further served with rice, mashed potato or toast.
- Leftover handlingCold cooked beef should have been refrigerated promptly and used within three or four days, and the finished stew should come to a full boil before it goes to the table.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (variously dated 1878-79), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by named Virginia housekeepers, belongs to a genre of compiled contributors' cookbooks in which each recipe carries its donor's initials, as this one does with Mrs. S.T. Its second-day dishes are the most revealing part of the book: a household that roasted a large joint on Sunday had to answer for it all week, and the answer was usually acid and spice rather than more roasting. The combination of vinegar, mustard and currant jelly might be read as a descendant of the English "made" sauces of the eighteenth century, though the lineage is inference rather than established fact, and the offhand remark that cold beefsteak and mutton chops are "always unfit to appear upon the table a second time" is a fair summary of what reheated meat tasted like before refrigeration.