Pot Roast
3 to 4 pounds chuck, round, rump or brisket Flour 3 tablespoons fat, preferably from salt pork 1 cup sliced carrots 1 cup sliced onions 1 cup chopped celery 1 cup sliced turnips If the meat is not in a solid piece, skewer or tie it into shape, wipe it with a damp cloth and roll it in flour. Heat the fat in a frying-pan or Dutch oven. Put in the meat and brown on all sides. If the frying-pan is used, transfer the meat, after it is brown, to a kettle deep enough to hold the beef and vegetables when the cover is on. Cover tightly and let simmer slowly for from four to five hours, turning twice. Add the vegetables at the end of four hours' cooking. After removing the meat and vegetables, thicken the gravy by adding one to two tablespoons of flour mixed with cold water for each cup of broth.
A plain braise of the American type, written for a coal range where a covered kettle could sit at a bare simmer all afternoon. Most of what needs adjusting is the clock and the liquid.
- Add liquidThe recipe relies on a very tight lid and the meat's own juices, which works on a slow range but scorches on a modern burner. Pour in about a cup of water, stock or a mix of stock and wine after browning, and check every hour that the pan has not gone dry.
- Cut the timeFour to five hours is far longer than a 3 to 4 lb chuck or rump needs today. Beef braised at a true simmer is fork-tender at about 3 to 3 1/2 hours; past that it dries and shreds even while submerged.
- Oven instead of stovetopA Dutch oven at 300-325F holds a steadier simmer than any burner and needs no watching. The liquid should barely tremble; a rolling boil tightens the muscle fibers and makes the meat stringy.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is listed. Season the meat generously before flouring, and taste the gravy again at the end.
- Salt pork fatRendered salt pork fat gives the browning a cured, slightly smoky base. Bacon drippings are the closest substitute; beef tallow or a neutral oil will brown just as well but tastes plainer.
- Vegetables at the endAdding carrots, onions, celery and turnips only for the last stretch is sound practice, then and now. Give them 45 minutes to an hour in the pot; longer and the turnips in particular collapse into the gravy.
- Thickening ratioOne to two tablespoons of flour slaked in cold water per cup of broth gives a light to medium gravy. Whisk it into the simmering liquid off the heat, then boil a full minute to cook out the raw flour taste.
- YieldThree to four pounds of chuck or rump serves six to eight, with the vegetables counted as the side dish.
Pot roast is the American name for a technique older than the country: a tough, well-worked cut cooked slowly in a covered vessel so that connective tissue melts into gelatin. Chuck, round, rump and brisket are all muscles that work hard and need this treatment, and they were among the cheaper cuts in the butcher's case when this book was compiled. A German connection is often proposed, with Sauerbraten named as an ancestor, but this is traditional attribution rather than documented descent; the American version carries no vinegar marinade, only the browning and the long covered simmer. Its presence in a cookbook of the era is unsurprising: it fed a family from an inexpensive cut, produced its own gravy and vegetables in one pot, and asked nothing of the cook but time.