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Stew
(Stufato) The Italian stufato is somewhat different from the stewed meat that is known under the name of "Irish stew". It corresponds to the French daube and is prepared in Italy in many different ways.
An excellent stufato can be made in the following way: Chop fine two bunches of parsley, a small carrot, half a medium sized onion, a little piece of seallion and two bay-leaves. Brown with a good piece of butter in a saucepan in which one and a half tablespoonful of oil have been previously poured. The meat must have been prepared beforehand, that is to say washed, trimmed and larded. When half cooked, season moderately with salt and pepper. If necessary, moisten with broth or water. During the cooking the saucepan must be covered with its cover and with a sheet of paper greased with fat or oil. The stufato will be ready after about three hours' cooking on a low fire. 171
A skeletal recipe by modern standards: it names no cut, no weight and no liquid quantity, assuming a cook who already knows what a pot roast looks like. The parts that need translating are the larding, the paper lid and the fire.
- The meat, unspecifiedThe original never says what or how much. The instruction to lard points to a single piece of braising beef — chuck, top round or brisket, perhaps 3 to 4 lb — cooked whole and sliced at the table. Cubed stew meat will work but gives a different, looser dish.
- LardingThreading strips of pork fat or pancetta through the interior of the meat with a larding needle. It matters far less with today's beef than with the lean, hard-worked animals of 1919; a few strips of pancetta laid over the top, or simply leaving any fat cap intact, does the same job.
- The paper lidThe greased sheet pressed under the pot cover works much like a cartouche, trapping steam and stopping the surface drying where the lid does not seat well. Parchment cut to the pot's diameter is the modern equivalent, and it is worth doing — the recipe adds almost no liquid, so the meat cooks largely in its own vapour.
- "Low fire" and three hoursBarely a simmer, one lazy bubble at a time. On a modern burner even the lowest setting can be too hot for a heavy pot; a 300F oven holds the temperature more reliably over the full three hours. The meat is done when a fork slides out without lifting the roast.
- Brown the meat, not just the vegetablesThe instruction is ambiguous, but the meat should go into the hot butter and oil and take real colour on every side before the pot is closed. This is the hinge of the dish: with no wine, no tomato and only a splash of broth, all the depth of a stufato comes from that crust.
- Two bunches of parsleyTwo bunches is a great deal of parsley by modern measure. Roughly a cup of chopped leaves is in the spirit of it; a full two supermarket bunches will overwhelm everything else.
- "Seallion"Almost certainly a misprint for scallion — a spring onion, used here as a small aromatic accent alongside the half onion, not as a substitute for it.
- MoisteningAdd broth or water a few tablespoons at a time, only when the pot threatens to scorch. The finished sauce should be a concentrated glaze around the meat rather than a gravy; if it ends up thin, lift the roast out and reduce it.
- YieldA piece of that size will serve about six, sliced against the grain; the pan juices are often spooned over polenta or used to dress a first course of pasta.
Stufato comes from stufare, to stew in a closed vessel — the same root as stufa, a stove — and the word describes the method rather than any fixed set of ingredients, which is why the author says it is made in Italy in many different ways. The comparison drawn here is telling: rather than explain the dish on its own terms, the book positions it against Irish stew and the French daube, the two braises an English-speaking reader of the period would already know. That is the posture of the whole volume, an early attempt to present Italian home cooking to an American audience that had few reference points for it beyond immigrant restaurants. The version given is austere, with no tomato and no wine — a reminder that the tomato-heavy idea of Italian food familiar in the United States was largely a southern export, and that a braise of this kind depends entirely on browning, patience and a tightly sealed pot.