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Fricasseed Beef
Take any piece of beef from the fore quarter, such as is generally used for corning, and cook it tender in just water enough to have it all evaporate in cooking. When about half done, put in salt enough to season well, and half teaspoonful pepper. If the water should not boil away soon enough, turn it off, and let the beef fry fifteen minutes-it is better than the best roast beef. Take tow tablespoonfuls flour, adding the fat-when mixed, pour on the hot juice of the meat. Serve with apple sauce.--Mrs. D.
This is a braise that finishes as a pan-roast: the beef cooks in a small amount of water until the liquid is gone, then browns in its own fat. Everything depends on judging the water.
- The hingeThe water must be nearly gone at the moment the meat is tender, so the pan can go straight from simmering to frying. If the beef is still tough when the pan dries, add hot water in small amounts; if it is tender while liquid remains, pour it off and reserve it for the gravy, as the recipe directs.
- The cut"Any piece from the fore quarter such as is generally used for corning" means chuck, brisket or plate. A 3-4 lb boneless chuck roast is the closest modern equivalent.
- Water and timeThe original gives no measurement, only "just water enough to have it all evaporate." In a heavy covered pot, roughly a cup for a 3 lb chuck roast, replenished as needed, over 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours at a bare simmer. Chuck is done when a fork twists out freely, not at a clock time.
- Salt at the halfway pointThe recipe adds salt "when about half done," along with half a teaspoonful of pepper; with the liquid reducing to almost nothing, whatever salt goes in ends up in the meat and the gravy. About 2 teaspoons of kosher salt for a 3 lb piece, adjusted at the end.
- "Tow tablespoonfuls"A printer's error for two. Two tablespoons of flour worked into the rendered fat, then loosened with the reserved cooking juice, makes a thin pan gravy; you will need about a cup of liquid, and water or stock can make up the shortfall.
- The fifteen-minute fryOnce dry, the meat sizzles in its own fat and takes on colour. Turn it so the surfaces brown evenly and watch it after ten minutes, since the meat juices left in the pan scorch quickly and will carry bitterness into the gravy.
- Yield and servingA 3-4 lb piece serves six to eight. The recipe closes with "Serve with apple sauce," which brings acidity against a rich, well-salted piece of beef.
"Fricassee" in nineteenth-century American cookbooks had drifted a long way from the French sense of white meat stewed in a pale sauce; here it means little more than meat cooked tender in a covered pot and served with a flour gravy made in the same vessel. The instruction to use the cut "generally used for corning" tells you what the fore quarter was for in a Virginia household: chuck, brisket and plate were the pieces destined for the brine barrel, and this recipe is a way of eating one of them fresh instead. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathered contributions from a great many Southern housekeepers, which is why so many entries end in an initial rather than a name, as this one does with Mrs. D. The claim that it beats "the best roast beef" is the sort of aside these contributors made freely, and it reflects a period when a good roasting joint was expensive and a cook's skill lay in making the cheap fore quarter taste like one.