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Lamb Stew
Edith E. Smith, East Orange, N. J.
Cut meat into serving slices; roll in flour. Melt one tablespoon butter in a kettle; slice an onion and fry a rich brown; then fry meat in same. Add one can of tomatoes and stew for two hours. Thicken gravy as for any stew. Salt and pepper to taste.
A brief community-cookbook entry that assumes you already know how a stew behaves. The gaps are quantities, pan size and heat level rather than anything technical.
- Quantity of meatNo weight is given. Two to two and a half pounds of lamb shoulder or neck, boned and cut into thick slices or 1½-inch chunks, suits one tablespoon of butter and one can of tomatoes and feeds four.
- "Serving slices"The wording points to meat sliced rather than pre-cubed stew meat, though no cut is named. Shoulder works best; leg is lean and will dry out over two hours.
- The can of tomatoesNo size is given. Period tomato cans ran from about 20 oz (No. 2) up to roughly 32 oz (No. 3), so a modern 28-oz can is a defensible reading but not a fixed equivalence. Use whole or crushed tomatoes with their juice, not passata.
- Liquid levelTomatoes alone will not cover the meat, and two hours of open simmering will reduce them to a scorching paste. Add water or stock to come most of the way up the meat, and keep the lid on.
- HeatThe hinge of the dish is a bare simmer. Lamb shoulder held at a lazy bubble goes tender in about two hours; a rolling boil at the same time will leave it stringy.
- Browning the onion"A rich brown" means genuinely browned, not softened, and one tablespoon of butter over that time will want watching. Add a little oil if the pan runs dry, and scrape the fond up when the tomatoes go in.
- ThickeningThe flour on the meat gives some body already. If more is wanted, work a tablespoon of flour into softened butter and whisk it in at the end, then simmer a few minutes to lose the raw taste.
- ServingNothing starchy is built in. Mashed potatoes, boiled rice or bread would all suit it.
Church and charity cookbooks like this one carry the contributor's name and town at the head of the recipe rather than any note on method — hence Edith E. Smith of East Orange, New Jersey. The dish itself is a tomato-braised lamb of the sort that became common in American home cooking once canned tomatoes were cheap and reliable, generally traced to the 1880s onward. Its placement under "Luncheon Dishes" rather than dinner reflects a household pattern in which the midday meal was hot but simpler, frequently made from a cut left over or bought inexpensively, and served without the courses a dinner would require.