Pot Roast
Wipe a six-pound piece of beef; put into hot frying pan, and sear until brown; then lard the upper surface. Place in tightly covered kettle or bean pot; add one cup of water. Cook slowly in oven until meat is tender, keeping only enough water in kettle to prevent burning. When nearly done, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Serve with a brown gravy made with water in the pan.
Beef Ragoût Wipe three pounds from the flank or round. Cut into small cubes; dredge with salt, pepper and flour. Brown meat in hot frying pan, being careful to avoid burning. Remove meat to kettle with close-fitting cover. Brown four tablespoons butter; add four tablespoons flour, and continue browning; add one and one half cups stock or water, one half cup each of carrot and onion; season with salt and pepper and simmer one and one half hours.
Two braises printed as one entry: a whole-piece pot roast and a cubed ragout. Neither gives an oven temperature or a time, so both hinge on judgment the original assumed you had.
- Oven heatA covered kettle in the oven wants 300-325F. Higher and the outside of a six-pound piece shreds before the centre gives way.
- TimeFigure roughly 45-50 minutes per pound at 300F, so about 4 1/2 to 5 hours for the six-pound roast. It is done when a fork twists free with no resistance, not at a set clock reading.
- CutThe recipe names no cut. Chuck, blade or rump are what this method is for; anything from the loin will dry out no matter how long it sits.
- "Lard the upper surface"This means threading strips of salt pork or fatback into the meat with a larding needle. Draping a few strips of bacon over the top, or simply choosing a well-marbled chuck, will approximate it.
- Bean potA New England glazed earthenware pot with a narrow mouth and tight lid. A Dutch oven or any heavy lidded casserole is the direct equivalent.
- Water level"Only enough water to prevent burning" is deliberate: this is a braise, not a stew. Keep it to the cup the recipe starts with or less, just filming the bottom, and you get concentrated pan juices for the gravy rather than thin broth.
- SaltingThe recipe salts near the end, which period writers explained as keeping the juices in. Modern kitchens more often salt the surface before searing; either works, but do not skip it.
- The ragout rouxBrowning butter then flour carries much of the flavour of the second dish. Take it to the colour of a hazelnut over medium heat and stir constantly, since butter will scorch quickly.
- YieldThe six-pound piece serves eight or so; the three-pound ragout serves six.
Pot roasting is the American kitchen's answer to a tough, cheap forequarter cut and a stove that stayed hot all day: sear for colour, then hold at low heat in a sealed vessel until connective tissue turns to gelatin. The bean pot named here is the giveaway that this is a New England book — Lowney's was a Boston chocolate firm, and its cook book (compiled by Maria Willett Howard, first published in 1907) leaned on the region's habits, where the same narrow-mouthed earthenware pot did Saturday beans and Sunday beef. The French-derived name on the second recipe, ragoût, from ragoûter, to revive the appetite, had been in English cookbooks since the eighteenth century and by 1900 meant little more than a well-browned stew; the brown-butter-and-flour roux it opens with is the standard thickening of turn-of-the-century American gravy work.