Lebanon Stew
Take scraps of raw beef, such as are not fit for boiling, cut very fine, picking out all the strings, and put into a kettle, and more than cover with cold water. Let it boil several hours, or until the water is nearly all gone. Season with butter, pepper and salt. It is rich and needs but little seasoning. Serve hot, as you would hash.--Mrs. S.T.
A thrift dish: tough trimmings cooked down in water until the liquid is gone and the meat falls into shreds. The whole recipe hinges on long, slow reduction, so the pot and the heat matter more than anything else.
- The meat"Scraps not fit for boiling" means gristly, sinewy trimmings — the sort a household butchering its own beef would have left over. Chuck, shin or boneless short rib, cut in small dice, gives the same result; anything lean and tender will only go dry and stringy.
- Cut fine, and pick it overThe instruction to remove all the strings is doing real work. Silverskin and heavy sinew will not soften into the dish the way collagen-rich connective tissue does; they stay as threads in the finished hash.
- "Kettle"Here a kettle means a heavy pot for the stove or hearth, not a tea kettle. A Dutch oven or any thick-bottomed pot of 4 quarts or more is the equivalent.
- "Let it boil"The book says boil, but a bare simmer over several hours suits the dish better. A true rolling boil for that long will toughen the muscle fibres before the connective tissue has a chance to melt, and will scorch the pot as the water goes.
- The last half hourOnce the liquid drops below the meat, stir often and drop the heat. This is where the dish either concentrates into something rich or catches and turns bitter. Leave a little moisture rather than cooking it bone dry.
- Seasoning lastSalt only at the end, as written. Reducing several cups of water to almost nothing concentrates whatever salt went in early, and the beef itself gives up a good deal of savour.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no quantities, and the meat reduces considerably in cooking, so judge by eye. Serve as the recipe directs, hot, like hash.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by some 250 Virginia housewives, is full of recipes like this one: signed with initials, briefly worded, and built around using up what a household already had. The name is unexplained in the book and no single origin is documented; Lebanon is a town in Russell County, Virginia, and the label may simply be a family or local one, as many recipe names in the collection are. What the dish records more reliably is the economy of a post-war Southern kitchen, where a beef carcass was broken down at home and the ragged trimmings too tough for the boiling pot still had to be made to feed someone. Long water-cooking to the point of near-dryness breaks down tough cuts, and the recipe serves the result as hash.