Stewed Beef
Take a piece of the rump, pound it till tender, lay in an iron vessel previously lined with slices of pork and onions, with a few pepper-corns, dredge it with salt, and baste with melted butter. Cover close, over a good heat, and when it has fried a nice brown, add one pint German cooking wine and as much more good soup stock, and stew it till soft. Before serving, take out the meat, skim off the fat, add a table-spoon of flour mixed smooth with broth, add gradually still more broth, strain it through a sieve and turn over the previously dished meat. The meat can be laid for some days before in vinegar, or in a spiced pickle, or be basted with either occasionally instead of lying in it.
This is a pot roast in the German manner, braised on top of the stove in a heavy lidded pot. The whole thing hinges on the seal: the lid must fit closely so the meat cooks in its own steam and the small amount of liquid does not boil away.
- The cut"A piece of the rump" is a rump roast; the recipe gives no weight, so a boneless rump or bottom round roast of 3-4 lb is a reasonable modern choice. Pounding would have helped tenderize tougher beef; with today's meat a few deep punctures for the marinade are enough, and hours of slow braising do the tenderizing.
- Iron vesselA Dutch oven or any heavy pot with a tight lid, about 5-6 quarts. The pork slices on the bottom keep the meat from scorching and add fat and gelatin; use sliced fatty salt pork or thick unsmoked bacon.
- German cooking wineNot a fortified or sweetened product. It most likely meant an ordinary dry German-style table wine, though the recipe does not say whether white or red; a dry Riesling or other unoaked dry white is a reasonable modern stand-in. A pint is 2 cups.
- Browning first"When it has fried a nice brown" means covered browning over moderate heat, which is slow. It is faster and better to brown the meat uncovered in the rendered pork fat on all sides, then add the onions and peppercorns, then the liquid.
- Stew it till softFigure 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours at the barest simmer, or 300F in the oven if you prefer not to babysit the burner. The liquid should tremble, not bubble; a hard boil at this stage squeezes the meat dry and tough.
- The sauceOne tablespoon of flour slaked in cold broth will only lightly bind 3-4 cups of liquid. If you want a proper gravy, reduce the strained braising liquid hard first, or use two tablespoons of flour worked into an equal weight of butter and whisked in.
- The vinegar optionThe final sentence is the sauerbraten variant. Marinate the beef in a covered dish in the refrigerator, not at room temperature as an 1880s larder would have allowed, and hold it to two or three days rather than "some days." Use a non-reactive container, never bare aluminum or unlined iron.
- YieldA roast of 3-4 lb serves six to eight. Cut across the grain in thick slices and dish it before saucing, as the recipe directs, so the gravy is not diluted by meat juices.
The Dixie Cook Book, compiled in the 1880s from Southern contributors and reissued repeatedly with borrowed material, dates from a period when German cookery had a following in American kitchens; the phrase "German cooking wine" in a Southern collection suggests the compilers expected readers to know what was meant. The closing note about vinegar or "spiced pickle" is the marinade that makes sauerbraten -- literally "sour roast" -- which is generally traced to the German practice of pickling tougher beef both to tenderize it and to keep it longer. Lining the pot with pork slices answers a real problem of cast iron over wood or coal heat, where the bottom of the vessel ran hotter than the sides. That the marinade is offered as an option rather than the method may suggest the recipe had already been naturalized.