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Stewed Beef (Inferior part of beef may be)
An inferior part of beef may be made to taste excellent if it is braised; that is, simmered with the cover on slowly, in company with onions (already fried) and well washed pieces of carrots and whole turnips. Put on also some small cabbages cut in halves, and if you can give it, a glass of good red wine.
A method sketch rather than a measured recipe: a tough cut, aromatics, and a covered pot on low heat. The proportions are left to the cook, so the notes below fill in what the original assumes you already know.
- The cut"Inferior part of beef" means the collagen-rich working muscles — chuck, shin, blade, oxtail, brisket. These are precisely the cuts braising rewards; a lean steak cut will only go dry and stringy.
- Brown first, then barely simmerBarely simmer -- The hinge of the dish is temperature: hold the liquid at a bare tremble, roughly 160-180F, for two to three hours. A rolling boil squeezes the muscle fibres tight and the meat turns dry even as it falls apart. Note that the original frys only the onions beforehand; browning the meat first is a later refinement, not something this text asks for.
- Liquid levelNo quantity is given because a braise wants only enough liquid to come halfway up the meat, topped up if it reduces too far. The original names no braising liquid beyond the optional glass of wine, so stock or water is the obvious filler; the wine is a flavour note, not the braising medium.
- Stagger the vegetablesCarrots and whole turnips will take an hour or more, but halved cabbages collapse in twenty minutes. Add the cabbage near the end rather than at the start, or it will be grey and sulphurous by the time the beef is ready.
- "Small cabbages"Most likely small green or Savoy cabbages rather than Brussels sprouts. Either works; sprouts want only ten minutes.
- Oven or stovetopThe original describes a covered pot simmered slowly, presumably over the fire; if you prefer, a heavy covered pot in a low oven (around 300-325F) gives steadier heat and needs less watching, though the book says nothing of an oven. Either way the lid stays on, as the original insists.
- Yield and servingThe original specifies no quantities; as a working guide, three pounds of chuck with the vegetables would feed four to six. Serve with boiled potatoes or bread to take up the liquor, and skim the fat before serving if the cut was a fatty one.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled during the First World War, when Belgium was under occupation and much of Europe was raising money for Belgian relief; the recipes were gathered from Belgian women, many of them refugees, and printed partly as fundraising and partly as testimony to a domestic culture under threat. That context shows in this entry. It is not a recipe so much as an argument that cheap meat need not be poor eating — the whole point is rescuing an "inferior part" with time and aromatics, and the wine appears only as a conditional, "if you can give it." Braising itself is far older than the book: the technique of slow, covered, moist cooking with root vegetables underpins Flemish stoofvlees and the beer-based carbonnade, and the same logic runs through French boeuf à la mode and the English pot roast. What varies from region to region is chiefly the liquid — wine here, brown ale a little further north.