Pot Roast
3 pounds beef round. 2 slices suet or 2 spoons butter. 1 carrot, diced. 1 onion. 1/2 cup celery and turnips or tomatoes.
Fry out suet. Wipe meat dry. Dredge with flour and brown the entire surface in the fat or butter. Place meat in pot, surrounded with vegetables. Add two cups of boiling water. Season, cover and let simmer for several hours. When done remove meat and thicken gravy if necessary.
A bare-bones braise, written for a cook who already knew what a pot roast should look like. The gaps worth filling are the cut, the heat and the time.
- The hinge: keep it barely simmeringTwo cups of water in a covered pot with three pounds of beef is a braise, not a boil. Hold it at the faintest bubble, around 190-200F; a hard boil squeezes the muscle fibres and gives you dry, stringy meat even after hours.
- Beef round is the lean choiceRound works but is unforgiving, since it has little connective tissue to melt into gelatin. A 3 lb chuck roast or boneless short rib will give a juicier, more tender result in the same time.
- "2 spoons butter"The size of the spoon is unspecified in the original, and period books are inconsistent about it; a tablespoon is the likeliest reading. Two tablespoons of butter or beef fat is enough to brown a roast this size in a heavy pot.
- Frying out suetSuet is the hard fat from around the kidneys, still sold by some butchers. Cut it small and render it slowly over low heat until the fat runs and the solids are crisp, then lift them out before browning the meat. Rendered beef tallow or plain oil substitutes directly.
- Dredge and brown properlyDry the meat, flour it thinly, shake off the excess, and brown in fat that is hot enough to sizzle on contact. Crowding or a lukewarm pot steams the surface and you lose the fond that makes the gravy.
- "Several hours"Figure 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours on the stovetop for 3 lb, until a fork slides in and turns easily. A 325F oven with the lid on is steadier than a burner and needs no attention.
- Watch the liquidTwo cups will not cover the meat, which is correct, but a loose lid lets it cook away. Check hourly, turn the roast, and add boiling water if the pan threatens to go dry.
- Seasoning"Season" here means salt and pepper. Roughly 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt for a 3 lb roast, applied before browning, plus more in the gravy at the end.
- Thickening the gravyStrain the liquid, skim the fat, and either reduce it or whisk in a slurry of about 1 tablespoon flour to 1 cup liquid. The dredging flour alone often thickens it enough.
- YieldServes 5 or 6 with potatoes.
Mary A. Wilson wrote for the Ladies' Home Journal and worked with the U.S. Food Administration during the First World War, and her Mrs. Wilson's Cook Book (1920) carries that period's habits: cheap cuts, small quantities of fat, vegetables used as much for flavour as for bulk. Pot roasting in a heavy covered pot on the stovetop was a common American treatment for the tough hindquarter cuts long before it was a Sunday luxury, and the technique — sear, then a small amount of liquid and long slow heat — is often said to descend from the same European braising tradition as the German Sauerbraten, which is sometimes credited with shaping the American pot roast through Pennsylvania and Midwestern German kitchens. Note that Wilson leaves the choice of celery and turnips or tomatoes to the cook, a small sign of a book written when the vegetable drawer depended on the season and the market.