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May 7
Menu: Tomato Pot Roast; Beet Greens; Boiled Potatoes; Spring Salad; Rhubarb Tutti Fruitti; Maple Gingerbread; Coffee Tomato Pot Roast-Rub over with flour surface of a 4-pound piece of beef cut from lower round, and season it with salt and pepper. Finely chop 2 onions and fry them until brown in 3 tablespoons melted Crisco. Remove onions, put in meat, and cook it until well browned on all sides. Add can of tomatoes and 2 quarts water, cover, and let simmer for about 2 hours, or until meat is tender. Remove meat; thicken and strain liquor. Cut meat in slices and serve in sauce, or use cold for lunch.
A straightforward braise, but the liquid quantity and the cut both need attention before it will work as written.
- Too much waterTwo quarts of water plus a can of tomatoes will submerge a 4-pound roast and boil rather than braise it, giving watery meat and a thin sauce. Liquid coming halfway up the meat is enough — usually the tomatoes plus 1 to 2 cups of water in a heavy Dutch oven with a tight lid.
- CriscoThe book's whole reason for existing. Any neutral oil works in the same quantity; a mix of oil and butter gives better browning colour. Three tablespoons is generous for browning and can be cut to two.
- "Can of tomatoes"Period cans ran from a No. 2 (about 20 oz) to a No. 3 (about 32 oz). A modern 28-oz can of whole or crushed tomatoes is the sensible reading.
- Lower roundWhat is now sold as bottom round or rump. It is lean and sinewy, which is why it wants long moist cooking; if your market has none, chuck gives a juicier result with the same method.
- TimingTwo hours rarely gets a 4-pound bottom round past the tough stage. Expect 3 to 3½ hours at a bare simmer, and test by whether a fork twists free rather than by the clock.
- The browning stepOnions first, removed, then the meat; the recipe does not say why, though removing them keeps them from burning during the longer sear, and it never says to return them. Dry the floured surface well and do not crowd the pan or the meat steams instead of colouring.
- Thickening and strainingWhisk a flour-and-water or flour-and-fat slurry into the simmering liquor and cook it two or three minutes before straining, or the sauce tastes raw. Straining is optional if you would rather keep the onion and tomato texture.
- YieldFour pounds of boneless beef serves 6 to 8, or fewer if you want leftovers for the cold lunch the recipe offers as an alternative. Slice across the grain, and slice it thin if serving cold.
This entry comes from The Story of Crisco, published by Procter & Gamble in 1913 to teach American cooks what to do with a wholly new product: a solid, shelf-stable vegetable shortening made by hydrogenating cottonseed oil, introduced in 1911. The recipes are advertising in the form of a cookbook, and the dated menu material — hence the stray "May 8" and the misleading "Coffee" heading carried over from the day's bill of fare — was there to show that Crisco could stand in for lard and butter at every meal of the year. A tomato pot roast suits that argument: browning meat was work otherwise done in lard, and a braise of a cheap round cut with canned tomatoes was unremarkable cooking by 1913, canned tomatoes having become one of the cheaper and more widely available canned goods in the United States.