Pot Roast
Pot roast calls for brisket or round and is one of the cheaper dishes of meat. Wipe the beef with a clean, wet cloth; sear by placing in a hot frying pan and turning until the entire surface is browned, then put in a kettle with not more than a cup of hot water; cover tightly and keep just below the boiling point. Do not let the meat boil dry, but add only enough water to keep it from burning. Cook until tender and add pared potatoes one half hour before it is done. Serve with brown sauce made from the fat in the pot.
A clear, unfussy braise that assumes a coal or gas range top and a heavy lidded kettle. The instructions are sound; only the vessel, the timing and the sauce need filling in.
- The hinge: below boiling"Keep just below the boiling point" is the whole method. A bare shiver at the surface, roughly 180-200F, keeps the collagen dissolving while the muscle fibres stay moist; a rolling boil squeezes them and gives you dry, stringy beef in the same amount of time.
- VesselA "kettle" here means a deep, heavy, tight-lidded pot, not a tea kettle. A 6-8 quart Dutch oven is the direct equivalent; a modern lid may seal more tightly than a period cover, in which case less added water is needed.
- Oven optionIf the burner will not hold a low enough flame, cover and set the pot in a 300F oven after searing. The heat is more even and there is less risk of scorching the bottom.
- TimingThe recipe gives none. Figure 3 to 3 1/2 hours for a 4 lb brisket, 2 1/2 to 3 for a boneless round. Tender means a fork slides in and pulls out with no resistance, not merely that the meat is cooked through.
- Cut notesBrisket is still brisket. "Round" in a modern case is usually sold as bottom round or rump roast; it is leaner and drier than brisket and benefits from being sliced thin across the grain.
- PotatoesHalf an hour is right only for small or quartered potatoes sitting in the liquid. Whole medium potatoes want 45 minutes, and they should rest in the braising liquid rather than on top of the meat.
- The brown saucePour off the pot liquid, skim the fat, then cook 2 tablespoons of that fat with 2 tablespoons flour until nut-brown and whisk the defatted liquid back in. The recipe gives no proportions; the flour-to-fat pairing is the usual reading of "brown sauce made from the fat in the pot."
- YieldA 4 lb piece with potatoes serves six to eight, and the leftovers slice better cold than hot.
Pot roast is the American name for what is technically a braise, and the "roast" in its name is often explained as a holdover from a time when any large piece of meat cooked whole was called roasted regardless of method, though that account is traditional rather than documented. A German or central European origin for the technique is sometimes suggested, but slow cooking of tough cuts in a covered pot with little liquid is common to English and French cookery well before American pot roast, and no clear line of descent has been established. By the early twentieth century it had become one of the standard economy dishes taught in domestic-science classes. Mrs. Fryer's opening line makes the pedagogical point explicit: brisket and round were cheap because they are worked muscle, full of connective tissue, and the loose-leaf cookbooks of this era were largely in the business of teaching housekeepers how to make such cuts palatable. The instruction to sear first reflects the then-current belief that browning "sealed in the juices" -- browning is in fact worth doing for flavor, but the sealing theory has since been discarded.