Waterless Cooker Dinner

The whole method depends on a pot that seals tightly enough to trap the meat's and vegetables' own steam over a very low flame. Reproduce that and the rest follows; skip it and you get a scorched roast.

• The hinge: low heat and a tight lidWith no added liquid, everything hangs on a heavy pot, a close-fitting lid and the smallest flame the burner will hold. Use a heavy Dutch oven, and set it on a heat diffuser if your smallest gas ring still runs hot. Resist lifting the lid — every peek costs steam that will not be replaced.
• What the cooker wasA thick-walled clamped pot with a set of shallow inset pans (the recipe uses at least two) that stacked above the main chamber, so steam rising off the roast cooked the upper foods. The nearest modern equivalents are a Dutch oven with a steamer insert, or an electric multi-cooker on its slow setting.
• "Duplicate pans"These are the stacking inserts, not extra saucepans on the stove. Without them, put the sliced carrots in a foil packet or small covered dish set on top of the potatoes, and the pudding in a covered basin resting above.
• The date puddingNo formula is given here; the recipe simply assumes a date pudding is to hand. Any steamed pudding that suits a two-hour steam in a covered basin will do.
• Two hours and a rump roastRump is lean and full of connective tissue. Two hours of gentle steam should give a firm, sliceable roast rather than a falling-apart pot roast; a shreddable texture would need considerably longer. Judge by a thermometer rather than the clock, remembering that a sealed pot over two hours will usually take the meat past medium-rare.
• Potatoes and carrotsPared potatoes left whole will take the full two hours; halve or quarter large ones so they finish with the meat. Sliced carrots in the upper pan cook by steam alone and will be done well before the roast, so cut them thick.
• SeasoningThe original names none. Salt and pepper the roast before browning, and salt the vegetables in their pans — nothing is added later to correct for it.
• YieldThree pounds of beef with potatoes, carrots and pudding would serve roughly six; the recipe states no yield.