Black Stew
Take any kind of fresh meat that has been boiled or roasted, cut up enough to make a dish; put one tablespoonful currant jelly, one tablespoonful of wine, one large spoonful butter, one-half onion chopped, pepper and salt. Stir all together fifteen minutes. Pickle cut up is an improvement, and brown sugar can be used instead of currant jelly-Mrs. J. T.
This is a leftovers dish: cold roast or boiled meat rewarmed in a sweet-sharp buttered sauce. The original assumes a cook who knows to keep the pan low and add moisture by eye, so a few things need saying.
- Add liquidAs written there is nothing in the pan but butter, jelly and a spoonful of wine, which will scorch long before fifteen minutes are up. Loosen it with a few tablespoons of stock or gravy, adding more as it reduces, so the meat warms in sauce rather than frying.
- Heat, not boilAlready-cooked meat toughens and shreds if it simmers hard. Keep the pan at a bare tremble and treat fifteen minutes as the outside limit; eight to ten is usually enough to heat through and bring the sauce together.
- "One large spoonful butter"Nineteenth-century spoon measures were loose. Read the tablespoons as level modern tablespoons and the "large spoonful" of butter as about 1 1/2 tablespoons, roughly 20 g.
- The wineSherry, Madeira and claret were the wines most likely to be at hand in a Virginia household of this date, though the recipe does not say which. Any of the three works; use a dry sherry or Madeira if you want the darker, more savoury result.
- Currant jelly and its substituteRed currant jelly is still sold and is the right thing here. If you use the brown sugar alternative, start with two teaspoons and add a squeeze of lemon or a splash of vinegar, since the jelly supplies acidity as well as sweetness.
- "Pickle cut up"Most likely a cucumber pickle from the household jar, finely chopped, though the recipe does not specify which pickle. A tablespoon of chopped dill or sour pickle sharpens the sauce noticeably; add it at the end so it keeps some bite.
- Season lastRoast and boiled meats are already salted, and jelly plus pickle shift the balance further. Taste before adding salt, and be generous with black pepper.
- Yield"Enough to make a dish" is indeterminate; about 1 lb of cooked meat would serve three or four with rice, toast or mashed potato.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree, drew on contributions from some 250 Virginia housewives, which is why so many entries end with a set of initials rather than a name; "Mrs. J. T." is one voice in that chorus. The dish itself belongs to the large family of leftover cookery, in which a cold joint was rewarmed rather than wasted, and its seasoning is English in descent: red currant jelly had long been a standard accompaniment to mutton, venison and game. The name may simply describe the colour, the butter, wine and jelly darkening the sauce well beyond the pale gravies of a hash or a fricassee. The suggestion that brown sugar may stand in for currant jelly says something about the period too, in a household where jelly was a preserve made in season and might simply have run out.