Savory Beef
2 pounds beef, plate, shank, rump or round 3 large onions, sliced 3 tablespoons fat 3 tablespoons flour 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon black pepper 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves and thyme or Summer savory 1 pint brown stock or boiling water and meat extract 2 tablespoons vinegar 1 tablespoon catchup Brown the onions slowly in fat. Increase the heat. Cut meat into sizes desired for serving, add it to the onions, and brown. Mix the flour, pepper and other seasonings. Sprinkle this mixture over the meat. Add the stock, vinegar and catchup. Cover closely. Simmer until meat is tender, allowing at least two hours for shank or plate and one and one-half hour for rump or round.
A straightforward braise in the German Zwiebelfleisch mould, thickened by flour dusted onto the browned meat rather than by a separate roux. Everything hinges on browning the onions slowly enough that they sweeten before the meat goes in.
- CutsPlate is the brisket-adjacent belly cut, now usually sold as short rib plate or navel; shank is fine but wants the full time. Rump and round are leaner and will be dry rather than tender if pushed much past the stated hour and a half.
- The fatThree tablespoons of "fat" in a recipe of this period meant beef drippings, lard, or bacon fat. Any of those, or a neutral oil, works; butter alone will scorch at the browning heat.
- A pint of stockTwo cups. "Brown stock" is stock made from roasted or browned beef bones; boiling water with a spoon of meat extract (Bovril, or a beef base paste) is the shortcut the recipe itself offers.
- CatchupMost likely tomato ketchup, though catchups of the period were also made from walnuts or mushrooms. It is here for sweetness and acid alongside the vinegar, not for tomato flavour.
- Salt goes missingThe teaspoon of salt is listed but the instruction only mentions flour, pepper and "other seasonings." Mix it in with them.
- Seasoning quantityThe line is ambiguous: the quarter teaspoon may cover cloves and thyme (or summer savory) together, or each separately. Ground cloves dominate quickly; err low.
- Simmer, don't boilA bare simmer on the lowest burner, tightly covered. A rolling boil tightens the muscle fibre and the two hours will leave shank stringy rather than yielding. A 300F oven in a covered pot is steadier than a stovetop flame.
- YieldTwo pounds of bone-in shank or plate serves four; boneless rump or round will stretch to five or six. Serve with noodles, boiled potatoes or spaetzle to take the onion gravy.
Beef browned with a heavy weight of onions, moistened with stock and sharpened with vinegar, is one of the oldest braising patterns in northern European cooking. The vinegar and cloves recall the sweet-sour braises of German and Pennsylvania Dutch kitchens, while the spoonful of catchup and the offer of "boiling water and meat extract" instead of real stock reflect the convenience products available to early twentieth-century American cooks. The two-hour simmer is aimed at cheap collagen-rich cuts, which it converts to gelatin.