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Vegetable Stew
Parboil 2 pared potatoes, I turnip, I carrot and I onion. Drain and cut in half inch dice.
Chop fine 2 square inches of fat salt pork, put in a kettle and cook slowly until well tried out.
Skim out the pork fragments, stir in 1 tablespoonful of flour and brown slightly then gradually add 1 pint of good beef stock or, failing that, boiling water. Season well with salt and pepper, add the diced vegetables with 1 cupful each of shelled peas, lima beans and corn cut from the cob. Simmer together until all are tender, add a little chopped parsley and serve.
A depression-era vegetable stew built on rendered salt pork and a light roux. The method is sound; only the units and a few timings need translating.
- The "I" is a 1The original setting uses a capital I for the numeral 1 throughout: 2 potatoes, 1 turnip, 1 carrot, 1 onion, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 pint stock, 1 cup each of peas, beans and corn.
- Two square inches of salt porkThe original gives an area, not a weight, and no thickness, so any conversion is approximate: reckon on a small piece of an ounce or so. Bacon or pancetta will stand in, though salt pork is unsmoked and salty; hold back on the added salt until the stock has reduced a little.
- "Tried out"Rendered. Chop the pork fine and cook it slowly over low heat until the fat has run and the scraps are crisp and golden. Rushing this over high heat scorches the fat and the whole pot tastes bitter.
- Parboil, then diceParboiling whole and cutting after keeps the dice from disintegrating. Five to eight minutes in salted water is enough for the potato, turnip and carrot; the onion needs less, so add it late or cook it separately.
- The roux is the hingeOne tablespoon of flour into that small amount of fat gives a fairly dry paste. Brown it only slightly, then add the pint of stock gradually, whisking, or it will lump. A pint is 2 cups.
- Corn, peas and limas go in lateThe recipe adds everything together, but frozen or fresh corn and peas need five minutes at most. Fresh shelled lima beans want fifteen to twenty; give them a head start and add the corn and peas at the end so they keep their texture.
- YieldAbout 4 generous servings as a main dish with bread, 6 as a side. It thickens on standing and takes well to a splash more stock when reheated.
Stews of this kind are the backbone of American cheap-cookery books, a genre that expanded in the late nineteenth century and again in the 1930s: a scrap of salt pork for fat and savour, a spoonful of flour to give the liquid body, and whatever root vegetables were cellared alongside whatever was in season. The pairing of peas, limas and corn points to high summer, and corn with beans in one pot is one of the oldest combinations in the North American kitchen, generally traced to Indigenous succotash. Salt pork did the work that stock cubes and oil do now, since it kept without refrigeration. The instruction to use "good beef stock or, failing that, boiling water" is the whole ethos of the genre in a single clause: the dish is designed not to fail when the better ingredient is out of reach.