Vegetable Stew
Pound Beef 2 Pound Mutton 2 Cup Carrots, diced 21 Carrot, whole 2 Cups Potatoes, diced 3/4 Cup Tomatoes, canned 2 Tablespoons Fat 3 Tablespoons Onion, Sliced 1 Cup Cabbage, Chopped 1/4 Cup Flour, for thickening Bay Leaf 6 Cloves 6 Peppercorns 2 Tablespoons Parsley, chopped 2 Teaspoons Salt 1 Sprig Thyme 7 Cups Water Cut meat into small pieces; brown with onion in fat; add water, one carrot in which the cloves have been imbedded, and other vegetables. Tie the bay leaf, peppercorns, and thyme together in a piece of cheesecloth and cook with stew ingredients until these are done (about two hours). Remove bag of seasonings; thicken stew with flour; add salt and pepper if desired.
A plain boiled beef-and-mutton stew of the kind that turned cheap cuts into dinner. The method is sound; the quantities as printed need judgement.
- The ingredient amounts are unreliableSeveral quantities in the list have slipped out of line with their ingredients — "2 Cup Carrots, diced 21 Carrot, whole" cannot be read literally. Work from the method instead: two cups diced carrot plus one whole carrot for the cloves, two cups diced potato, and the rest to taste. The meat weights are too garbled to reconstruct with confidence; a pound or two each of beef and mutton will suit the seven cups of water.
- Cut of meat"Beef" and "mutton" here mean stewing meat, not steak — chuck or shin, and mutton shoulder or neck. Mutton is scarce in most shops now; lamb shoulder or lamb neck substitutes directly, though it will taste milder and may cook through somewhat sooner.
- The clove-studded carrotEmbedding the cloves in a whole carrot is a practical trick, not decoration: it keeps them together so they can be fished out with the carrot at the end rather than turning up whole in someone's spoon.
- Bouquet garniThe cheesecloth bundle of bay, peppercorns and thyme does the work of a bouquet garni (with whole spices in it, strictly a sachet). A tea ball or a square of muslin tied with string does the same job. Remove it before thickening, as directed.
- Browning mattersMuch of the colour and depth of the finished stew comes from browning the meat properly at the start. Work in batches in the fat so the pieces sear rather than steam, and scrape the browned base into the water.
- Thickening with flourStirring 1/4 cup of dry flour straight into hot liquid will lump. Slake it with cold water to a thin cream first, or work it into a little soft butter and whisk in pieces of that; then simmer several minutes to cook out the raw taste.
- Timing the potatoesTwo hours of simmering will reduce diced potato to a thickener. If you want distinct pieces, add the potato and cabbage in the last 30 and 15 minutes respectively, and give only the meat and whole carrot the full time.
- Heat and yieldKeep the pot at a bare simmer, not a boil, or the meat tightens. With seven cups of water and the meat as listed this should make roughly six to eight servings, and it improves on the second day.
Cookbooks of the early twentieth century were teaching manuals as much as recipe collections, and a stew like this one was a set piece: it shows a young housekeeper how to brown meat, build a broth, bundle whole spices for easy retrieval, and thicken with flour, all in one dish. The presence of both beef and mutton in the same pot is a reminder that mutton was for a long time ordinary butcher's meat in American and British kitchens rather than the specialty item it has since become, though it makes a poor tool for dating a recipe precisely. The clove-stuck onion or carrot is a much older European kitchen habit, generally traced to French household cookery, where it appears alongside the bouquet garni for the same reason: to flavour the pot without being eaten.