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Meats (Water and the onion sliced)
water and the onion, sliced. Cover and cook slowly until tender. Remove the seeds from the peppers; cover them with another cup of boiling water and let them stand until cool; then squeeze them from the water with the hand, getting out all the pulp. To the water and pulp add salt and a little flour to thicken; pour over the cooked meat; boil for a minute and serve. This is one of the most palatable of Mexican dishes.
The page opens mid-sentence — the head of the recipe, with its quantities of meat, fat and chile, is on the leaf before this one. What survives is a complete method for a chile-thickened braise, and it works if you supply the missing proportions.
- What the missing first line saidWhat the missing first line may have said -- The surviving text implies only that water and a sliced onion were added to the meat; the cut, the quantity, and whether it was browned first are lost with the previous leaf. Something on the order of 2 lb of chuck or pork shoulder, one onion, and water barely to cover would suit the method.
- "The peppers" are dried chile pods"The peppers" are almost certainly dried chile pods -- The method described, softening in boiling water until the pulp can be worked loose from the skins, points to dried red chiles rather than fresh ones, though the recipe names no variety.
- Squeezing out the pulpStem and seed the pods, pour a cup of boiling water over them, and leave until cool enough to handle. Rubbing the softened flesh from the papery skin with your fingers gives a coarse purée; a blender and a sieve do the same job faster and give a smoother sauce. Wear gloves if the chiles are hot.
- "Cook slowly until tender"Two to three hours at a bare simmer, depending on the cut. The meat should shred under a fork before the chile goes in.
- The flourA tablespoon or two whisked into a little of the cool chile liquid, then stirred in, is enough. Added dry to hot liquid it will lump.
- Boil for a minute, no moreThe recipe gives no reason for the brief boil; presumably it is enough to set the flour thickening. Long boiling after the chile is added is generally held to dull its aroma.
- SeasoningSalt is the only seasoning named in the surviving text; more may have been specified on the missing leaf. Ground cumin, oregano and a clove of garlic are conventional additions.
- YieldThe recipe states no yield; roughly four servings if two pounds of meat is assumed. Serve with rice, beans or tortillas.
American cookbooks of the early twentieth century regularly carried a page or two of "Mexican dishes," usually meaning chile con carne and its relatives as they were being cooked in Texas, New Mexico and southern California rather than in Mexico itself. The technique here — soaking dried pods, pressing the pulp through the fingers, discarding the skins — is the older way of making red chile sauce, predating both the blender and the commercial chili powder that was being sold in the United States from the 1890s onward. Mrs. Fryer's book prints the pod method. The closing line, "one of the most palatable of Mexican dishes," is straightforward praise.