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Brown Beef Stew
Take 2 pounds of any cheap cut of beef containing a moderate amount of fat and little or no bone. Wipe the meat and cut it into strips one by three inches. Should there be bone, trim it, cover with cold water and simmer for several hours to yield a weak stock. Try out the trimmed fat (or a little suet) and when very hot lay in it the pieces of meat, turning them until quickly browned. Transfer as fast as colored to a stew-pan. When all are done dredge in sufficient flour to absorb the fat and stir until dark brown. Gradually add 1½ pints of water (or stock from the bone) making a thin gravy.
Strain this over the meat, add I finely cut onion, a bunch of herbs or any desired seasoning, cover and simmer very gently for three hours. The character of this dish may be changed by the substitution of strained tomatoes for water and a variety of seasonings. Potatoes cut in quarters may also be added an hour before serving or macaroni previously cooked.
Dumplings for Stew. -Mix together 1 pint of flour, ½ teaspoonful of salt and 1 teaspoonful of baking-powder. Add enough sweet milk to make a dough, turn on a board, roll out and cut in small circles or squares. Drop into the stew, cover and keep at a slow steady boil, without uncovering for twenty minutes.
A straightforward braise built on the principle that cheap cut plus long low heat equals tenderness. Two things in the original need attention: an ambiguous liquid measure and a dumpling dough with no shortening.
- The hinge: brown hard, then simmer barelyThe fat must be very hot and the strips added in batches so they colour rather than steam; that browning is the main source of the dish's flavour and colour. After the liquid goes in, keep it at a bare shiver — the recipe's own instruction is to 'simmer very gently for three hours'.
- "1/2 pints of water"Almost certainly a typesetting loss of 1½ pints, which is 3 cups and about right for 2 lb of meat in a thin gravy. Half a pint alone would scarcely cover the beef. Add enough to come just to the top of the meat and top up as needed.
- Cheap cutChuck, shin, blade or boneless short rib. Avoid anything sold as "stew meat" from the round, which has too little collagen and fat to reward three hours. The 1x3-inch strips are larger than modern cubes and hold together well over the long cook.
- Trying out the fatRendering the trimmed fat or a little suet gives a beef-flavoured frying medium. Beef tallow, lard or a neutral oil all work; butter alone will scorch at browning heat.
- Dredging the flourThe flour is toasted in the fat until dark brown — a proper brown roux, and the reason the gravy tastes of more than water. Stir constantly and expect five to ten minutes over medium heat. Stop short of black or it will turn bitter.
- Bunch of herbsA bouquet garni: parsley stems, thyme, a bay leaf, tied so it can be pulled out. If strained tomatoes replace the water, as the recipe suggests, the meat may take a little longer to come tender; judge by the meat rather than the clock.
- Dumplings1 pint of flour is 2 cups; expect roughly 3/4 to 1 cup of milk. "Sweet milk" simply means fresh, unsoured. There is no shortening in the dough, so it rises on the baking-powder and trapped steam alone — the instruction not to lift the lid for twenty minutes is the whole technique. Rolling and cutting gives flatter, denser dumplings than dropping by spoonfuls.
- YieldTwo pounds of meat serves four to five generously, six with potatoes or macaroni added. Like most braises it improves overnight.
Brown stew is the plainest expression of a technique that runs through nineteenth-century household cookery: buy the cut nobody wants, build flavour with a hot pan and browned flour, and let time do the rest. Books of this kind return again and again to shin, chuck and neck, cuts full of connective tissue that dissolves into gelatin after several hours and gives a body no expensive steak can match. The brown-flour thickening belongs to British and Anglo-American practice as much as to French, and the note about simmering trimmed bone for "a weak stock" reflects a period habit of wasting nothing edible. Dumplings appear as a matter of economy as much as appetite: a pint of flour stretched a two-pound stew to feed the whole table.