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Lobscouse, or Scouse
There's scouse made with meat, even chicken, and scouse made only with hardtack and whatever vegetables there may be in the galley stores. The kind made without meat is called "bread scouse," and since it doesn't amount to much we'll only give the recipe for a real scouse:
Dump the galley into a pot and boil it all up together. A real scouse must have fat meat in it, for "lob" means "a hanging lump of fat," so hack a hunk of salt beef into cubes and dice any vegetables on hand, often potatoes only, but sometimes onions and carrots, even a turnip. Meanwhile hammer a hunk of hardtack or sea biscuit to powder or soak it soft in water and milk, dump your meat and vegs in, stew everything together and pepper well. When it's done you can eat it like porridge, or bake it at the finish. In the case of "bread scouse," it is always baked. 2 POUNDS KIDNEYS, BEEF PREFERRED 1/2 POUND BACON
This is a method rather than a formula: no quantities, no times, and a deliberate looseness about what goes in. A few things do need translating for a shore-based kitchen.
- Start with the saltSalt beef as issued to ships was preserved hard, and eating it straight from the cask would be inedibly briny. Soak the cubes in several changes of cold water for at least 8 hours, or overnight, before they go anywhere near the pot. Modern corned beef brisket is far milder and needs only a rinse.
- HardtackSea biscuit is a plain flour-and-water cracker baked to stone hardness. Unsalted water crackers, matzo or plain pilot biscuit stand in directly; roughly 4 oz crushed will thicken about 2 quarts of stew. It functions as the starch and the thickener at once, so add it gradually and judge the body as you go.
- Rough proportionsFor four people: 1 lb soaked salt beef or corned brisket cut in 1/2-inch dice, 1 1/2 lb potatoes, one large onion, two carrots, a small turnip if you like, water to cover by an inch, and crushed biscuit to thicken.
- Order of cookingThe meat wants far longer than the vegetables. Simmer the beef alone, covered, for about an hour and a half until it yields to a fork, then add the root vegetables for 20 to 25 minutes and stir the biscuit in at the end. Dumping everything in together, as written, gives collapsed potatoes and chewy meat.
- Pepper, and no salt"Pepper well" is the whole seasoning, and it is meant literally -- black pepper is the only sharpness in the dish. Do not salt until the very end and taste first; cured beef will usually have supplied enough.
- Baking at the finishTo brown it off, transfer to a shallow dish and give it 25 to 30 minutes at 375F until the top sets and crusts. Bread scouse, having no fat of its own, benefits from a few dots of butter or dripping before it goes in.
- The point of the fatThe etymology given here for "lob" is the reason the recipe insists on fat meat. Lean beef makes a thin, dull scouse; the rendered fat is what carries flavour into the biscuit and potato. Bacon or salt pork added with the beef does the same work if your cut is lean.
Lobscouse is a sailor's stew of long standing, recorded in English from the early eighteenth century and cognate with the Low German and Scandinavian labskaus, still eaten in Hamburg and Bremen as a hash of corned beef, potato and beetroot. It is the dish that gave Liverpool its nickname: scouser, from the pot of scouse that fed dockside and shipboard alike. The logic is entirely that of the galley -- salt meat that keeps for months, biscuit that keeps indefinitely, and whatever roots were still sound in the stores, all cooked in one pot over a single fire. The distinction between real scouse and "bread scouse" is a distinction of poverty as much as of ingredients, and the derivation of lob as a hanging lump of fat is a traditional gloss often repeated by seamen rather than a settled etymology. Its appearance in a book of outdoor cooking follows naturally: the requirements are a pot, a fire, and no refrigeration.