Braised Beef
An iron, or agate-ware kettle, with closely fitting cover, is absolutely necessary for perfectly cooking braised beef. Select six pounds of round of beef, or any tough, inexpensive piece. Try out one cup salt pork cubes; add one cup each of chopped celery, carrot, onion and turnip. Wipe meat; sprinkle with salt and pepper and dredge with flour. Place meat on bed of vegetables and cook in covered kettle twenty minutes; add two pints hot water and cook slowly until tender, about four hours, turning meat and basting occasionally. It may be necessary to add more water, for there should be about a pint and a half when meat is cooked. Thicken gravy with four tablespoons flour, blended with two tablespoons butter, added twenty minutes before serving. A bouquet of sweet herbs may be added to improve the flavor.
A straightforward pot roast in the older sense of braising: sear, then a long slow simmer under a tight lid. Nothing here is unsafe, but a few details need translating.
- The pot"Agate-ware" is speckled enamelled steel, the period's answer to cast iron. A heavy Dutch oven with a well-fitting lid does exactly the same job; the point is that steam stays inside.
- Try out the pork"Try out" means render slowly over moderate heat until the cubes give up their fat and brown. That fat is the cooking medium for the vegetables the beef then sits on.
- The first twenty minutesThis stage before any water goes in is where whatever colour the meat gets is developed, though the closely covered kettle traps steam and limits it. Keep the heat moderate and resist adding liquid early.
- Stovetop or ovenThe recipe assumes a range top and names no oven. If you prefer, a low oven around 300F will hold a steadier simmer over four hours; either way, check that the liquid never reaches a rolling boil.
- Four hours is realA six-pound round is dense and lean, and the time is not padding. It is done when a fork twists free without resistance, which may take longer than four hours on a well-exercised piece.
- Two pints of waterFour cups. The instruction to finish with about a pint and a half (three cups) is the useful one — that is roughly how much liquid the finished gravy wants.
- The thickeningFour tablespoons flour with two tablespoons butter is a dry-ish paste, closer to beurre manié than a cooked roux. Work it smooth, whisk in bits at a time, and give it the full twenty minutes so the flour loses its raw taste.
- Bouquet of sweet herbs"Sweet herbs" was a loose period term, usually covering some combination of parsley, thyme, bay, marjoram and savory tied together. The recipe does not say when to add it; with the water is the practical moment, and it is worth fishing out before thickening.
- YieldSix pounds of boneless round will serve eight to ten generously, more if sliced thin, with leftovers that slice cleanly cold.
Braising sits between roasting and boiling, and American cookbooks of the early twentieth century pressed it into service for exactly the cuts this recipe names — round, chuck, anything tough and inexpensive. The bed of pork fat and diced root vegetables under the meat does the work of an aromatic base, though the recipe itself never uses the word mirepoix; the vegetables raise the beef out of the liquid so the top browns while the bottom stews. Lowney's Cook Book was published by the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and like other maker-sponsored books of the period it surrounded its promotional chocolate chapters with a full course of ordinary domestic cookery in the New England school — measured, economical, and quietly insistent that the right pot matters as much as the right cut.