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Smothered Beef
Select the middle of the rump, flank or round of beef, wipe clean with a moist cloth, and sear it all over by placing it in a fryingpan and turning it until the surface is browned. Place in a kettle with a little water, and keep it to just the boiling point; fit the cover over tightly to keep in the steam, and add a little water now and then as it boils away. Cook until quite tender, serving hot or cold, as preferred.
This is a plain pot roast with no seasoning list and no timings, written for cooks who already knew what a covered kettle would do to a tough cut. The technique is sound; the blanks need filling.
- The cutRump, flank and round are all lean working muscles. Buy 3-4 lb of bottom round or rump roast, tied, and expect the flank to behave differently: modern flank steak is thin and will overcook long before it becomes tender, so rump or round is the better choice here.
- "A kettle"Not a tea kettle. Oscar means a deep lidded pot with a close-fitting cover, and a heavy Dutch oven is the direct equivalent. The tight lid is doing the actual work, since the meat cooks in trapped steam rather than in liquid.
- The hinge: just below a boil"Keep it to just the boiling point" means the water barely trembling, somewhere around 190-205F rather than a rolling boil. A hard boil squeezes the muscle fibres tight and gives you dry, stringy beef no matter how long you cook it. If the pot is bubbling audibly, drop the heat.
- How little water"A little water" is undefined; half a cup or so is enough to make steam without submerging the roast. Check it periodically and add a splash of boiling water so the pot never runs dry and scorches.
- TimingFigure 3 to 3 1/2 hours over low heat for a 3-4 lb piece. It is done when a fork slides in and turns freely, not at any particular internal temperature; collagen needs long heat, so a thermometer reading of 165F on a round roast still means it is tough.
- SeasoningThe original names none. Salt and pepper the meat before searing, and the pan juices will be better for an onion, a carrot and a bay leaf added to the kettle. The concentrated juices at the end are the gravy, thickened with a little flour if wanted.
- ServingA 3-4 lb roast serves six to eight. Served hot, slice across the grain and spoon the juices over. Served cold, chill the whole piece before slicing for thin cold beef.
"Smothered" in nineteenth-century American cookbooks generally meant cooked under a tight cover in its own steam, applied to chickens, onions and beef alike, and the word survives in dishes like smothered pork chops. Oscar Tschirky's Cook Book (1896) ran to over nine hundred pages and mixed the hotel's showpieces with domestic staples of exactly this kind. The recipe's silence on time and seasoning is common for the period: the printed page often specified only what was distinctive, which here is the initial sear and the sealed lid. Searing meat before braising was widely explained at the time as "sealing in the juices," a notion later disproved; what the browning actually contributes is flavour, which is reason enough to keep it.