Beef Goulasch
Cut 2 pounds of lean beef from the cross rib, round or other inferor part into finger lengths; chop fine I large onion and brown it in 1 tablespoonful of hot melted dripping; add I heaping tablespoonful of flour and stir often until well browned. To this add 1 scant teaspoonful of salt, the same quantity of paprika and 1 pint of hot water or stock, stirring until smoothly thickened. Drop in the meat, cover and simmer for two hours or until the meat is very tender.
Paprika is of a much brighter color than cayenne, no hotter than white pepper but has a more decided flavor.
A plain braise that works as written; the only real adjustments are vessel, liquid and a little seasoning discipline.
- DrippingBeef or bacon dripping was the standard household fat. Any neutral oil, lard or clarified butter substitutes directly for the tablespoon.
- A pint of stockTwo cups. It sounds thin for 2 lb of meat; keep the lid tight and top up only if the pan threatens to go dry.
- Cut of beef"Cross rib" is the chuck end of the rib, and "round" here means the whole hind leg. Either works; chuck is more forgiving over two hours. Cut the strips a good half-inch thick or they will shred.
- The browned rouxBrowning the flour with the onion until it takes colour is the flavour hinge of the dish. Stop while it smells nutty and looks the shade of a copper penny; past that it turns bitter and loses thickening power.
- PaprikaUse fresh sweet Hungarian paprika, and add it off direct heat or with the liquid — paprika scorches in seconds in hot fat and turns acrid. Old supermarket paprika contributes colour and nothing else; a teaspoon of it will taste of dust.
- Simmer, don't boilKeep the pot at a bare tremble on the lowest burner, or hold it at 300F in the oven. A rolling boil in two hours will tighten the muscle fibres and give you dry meat in thin gravy.
- SeasoningA scant teaspoon of salt for 2 lb of meat and 2 cups of liquid is light by current taste; check and correct at the end. A splash of vinegar or a spoonful of tomato at the finish sharpens what is otherwise a very soft-tasting stew.
- YieldFour to five servings. Goulash is traditionally served over boiled potatoes, noodles or dumplings, though the recipe itself says nothing about serving.
Goulash reached English-language cookbooks from Hungary in the later nineteenth century, the name coming from gulyás, the Hungarian word for a herdsman — originally a cattle-drovers' meat stew rather than a formal restaurant dish. Its appeal to a low-cost cookery book is obvious: it takes the cheap, hard-working muscles the author names outright as "inferior" and makes them palatable with time, an onion and a spice. The closing note explaining what paprika is and how it differs from cayenne tells you the ingredient was still unfamiliar to many American and British households at the time of writing, often confused with the hotter red peppers already on the shelf. Note too what is absent: no garlic, no caraway, no tomato, no sour cream. This is the dish stripped to its frame for a reader counting pennies, not the paprikás of a Budapest kitchen.