Goulash
3/4 Pound Beef, chuck 1 Tablespoon Fat 1/2 Teaspoons Salt 1/2 Tablespoons Onion, chopped 1-3 Sweet Red Pepper 1 Cup Potato, diced 3 Peppercorns 1/2 Bay Leaf 12 Teaspoon Paprika 11/2 Cups Water (more or íess) 1 Cup Tomatoes Fry onion a golden brown in the fat; add meat, cut into small pieces, and brown well. Add red pepper, seasonings, and tomato. Cook until meat is tender, adding the water gradually as needed. Add potatoes and cook until they are tender. Noodles may be added if they are desired, about 20 minutes before the potatoes are done. L
A small-batch Hungarian-style stew scaled for two, of the kind that fills bridal cookbooks of the early twentieth century. A few of the quantities in the original list are unclear, so read the whole list before you start.
- Paprika is the pointThe printed amount reads as "12 Teaspoon," which cannot be right as written; given that the same list prints water as "11/2 Cups," a lost fraction slash for 1/2 teaspoon is the likeliest reading, though up to a couple of teaspoons would suit this much meat. Sweet Hungarian paprika, added with the other seasonings and the tomato, gives the colour and the flavour. Paprika scorches easily and turns bitter, so avoid letting it sit in bare hot fat.
- Ambiguous amountsThe salt and onion are printed as "1/2 Teaspoons" and "1/2 Tablespoons," and the water as "11/2 Cups." The water is almost certainly 1 1/2 cups; the salt and onion read most simply as 1/2 teaspoon and 1/2 tablespoon, though the plural may conceal a dropped "1" in either case. The pepper line, "1-3 Sweet Red Pepper," is probably 1/3 of a sweet red pepper, chopped.
- Chuck, and whyChuck is the right cut and still widely sold. It needs a slow simmer — perhaps an hour to an hour and a half in a covered pan over low heat, judged by tenderness rather than the clock — before the potatoes go in. Substituting a lean quick-cooking cut will give you dry meat in thin liquid.
- Cut small"Small pieces" is not defined; cubes of an inch or less suit this quantity. In a batch this size the browning step is fast, and crowding the pan will steam the meat instead; brown in one uncrowded layer.
- Water graduallyThe gradual addition is deliberate: the stew should stay just barely covered, not soupy, so the sauce reduces to a paprika-red gravy. Keep a little extra hot water at hand rather than adding it all at the start.
- The noodles instructionDiced potato cooks in 15 to 20 minutes, so "20 minutes before the potatoes are done" means the noodles go in with the potatoes or just before. Dried egg noodles will absorb liquid quickly; add half a cup of water with them. Choose potatoes or noodles rather than both unless you want a very thick dish.
- Whole spicesThe peppercorns and half bay leaf are meant to be fished out before serving. Tie them in a scrap of cloth or drop them in a tea infuser if you would rather not hunt.
- YieldThree-quarters of a pound of beef with a cup of potato serves two generously, or three with bread. It doubles cleanly in a wider pan.
Goulash descends from Hungarian gulyás, a name taken from the cattle herdsmen (gulyás means herdsman) whose stewed beef is generally traced to the plains of the Great Hungarian Plain; paprika, brought into Hungarian cooking well after the pepper arrived from the Americas, is what turns a plain beef stew into goulash. By the time this book was printed the dish had been thoroughly domesticated in American kitchens, where it drifted toward tomato and potato and, in many households, toward noodles — hence the optional addition noted at the end here. The recipe itself says something about the intended audience: a cheap braising cut, a two-person yield, one pan, and seasonings that could be bought at any grocer.