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Beef and Apricots
Stew your beef, say three pounds of steak, in some gravy, adding to a pint of liquor a level teaspoonful of white sugar. Throw in a handful of the dried apricots, but be sure you wash them well first. This dish is generally accompanied by leeks, first blanched for a few moments, and then put in the stew. Flavor with salt, pepper, and the rind of half a lemon which remove before you serve the stew. For English taste the sugar could be omitted. For an Invalid This must be begun at least three hours before it will be required. Take two ounces of pearl barley, wash it well, and put it in cold water enough to cover it, for an hour. Take a pound of good steak, shred it in small pieces, and put it in an enameled saucepan with a quart of cold water and a sprinkle of salt. Strain the water from the barley and add this last to the meat, and let it simmer for two hours. Then strain off the liquor and pound the meat and barley in a mortar, rub it through a sieve; when it is a smooth puree put it back into the pan with its liquor and a gill of cream. Let it simmer again for a moment and serve it in a cup with a lid to it.
Two dishes share the page: a Flemish sweet-savoury beef stew and a beef-and-barley invalid puree. Neither gives quantities for the aromatics or a pan size, so both need a little filling in.
- Cut of beef"Three pounds of steak" here means stewing steak — chuck, shin or blade — not a grilling cut. Cut it into 1½-inch pieces. The recipe says only to stew it in gravy; browning first is a modern addition, not something it calls for.
- "Some gravy"This means stock or the pan liquid from an earlier roast, not thickened modern gravy. Use about a pint of beef stock to start and top up so the meat stays barely covered; simmer 2 to 2½ hours until tender.
- A gillA gill is a quarter of a pint, so about 5 fl oz (140 ml) of cream in the invalid dish — a little over half a cup.
- Dried apricotsDried apricots of the period were hard and usually sulphured, which may be why the recipe insists on washing them. Modern soft-dried fruit needs no soaking and will break down if added at the start — put a handful in for the last 30 to 40 minutes.
- LeeksBlanch trimmed leeks for a minute or two, as directed, then add them near the end of cooking; through the full simmer they would collapse entirely.
- Lemon rindUse a wide strip of peel with no pith, and take it out before serving as directed. Left in through a long simmer it turns the sauce bitter.
- The sugarA level teaspoon per pint, as given. It balances the tart apricots and the lemon; the aside about "English taste" suggests the compiler expected British readers to find sugar in a beef stew strange.
- The invalid versionAn enamelled pan is specified to keep the food off bare iron or worn tinning, which could taint a long, slow simmer. Any modern stainless or enamelled pan is fine. Strain, then work the meat and barley through a sieve — a food processor saves much of the labour, but the sieve is still what makes it smooth.
- YieldNo yields are given. Three pounds of steak will serve about six; the invalid dish, served "in a cup with a lid," reads as one or two servings and should be eaten hot, as it thickens as it cools.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled by Mrs. Brian Luck in 1915 from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion, and sold in aid of relief funds — which explains the recurring asides about what "English taste" would prefer. Dried fruit stewed with beef belongs to an old northern European sweet-savoury tradition that is often said to have survived longer in Flanders and the Rhineland than in Britain, where sugar in meat dishes is generally thought to have retreated largely to the sauce boat by the nineteenth century. The second half of the page is pure Edwardian invalid cookery: a genre of its own in the period's household books, built on the belief that a sick person could absorb the goodness of meat only if it were reduced to essence, pounded, sieved and served in a covered cup to keep it hot at the bedside. Pearl barley was a common thickener for such dishes, cheap and thought to be soothing.