Shin of Beef308-* stewed.—(No. 493.)
Desire the butcher to saw the bone into three or four pieces, put it into a stew-pan, and just cover it with cold water; when it simmers, skim it clean; then put in a bundle of sweet herbs, a large onion, a head of celery, a dozen berries of black pepper, and the same of allspice: stew very gently over a slow fire till the meat is tender; this will take from about three hours and a half, to four and a half.
Take three carrots, peel and cut them into small squares; peel and cut ready in small squares a couple of turnips, with a couple of dozen of small young round silver button onions; boil them, till tender; the turnips and onions will be enough in about fifteen minutes; the carrots will require about twice as long: drain them dry.
When the beef is quite tender, take it out carefully with a slice, and put it on a dish while you thicken a pint and a half of the gravy: to do this, mix three table-spoonfuls of flour with a tea-cupful of the beef liquor; to make soup of the rest of it, see No. 238; stir this thoroughly together till it boils, skim off the fat, strain it through a sieve, and put your vegetables in to warm; season with pepper, salt, and a wine-glass of mushroom catchup (No. 439), or port wine, or both, and pour it over the beef.
Send up Wow-wow sauce (No. 328) in a boat.
N.B. Or, instead of sending up the beef whole, cut the meat into handsome pieces fit to help at table, and lay it in the middle of the dish, with the vegetables and sauce (which, if you flavour with No. 455, you may call “beef curry”)[309] round it. A leg of mutton is excellent dressed in the same way; equal to “le gigot de sept heures,” so famous in the French kitchen.
Obs.—This stew has every claim to the attention of the rational epicure, being one of those in which “frugality,” “nourishment,” and “palatableness,” are most happily combined; and you get half a gallon of excellent broth into the bargain.
We advise the mistress of the table to call it “ragoût beef:” this will ensure its being eaten with unanimous applause; the homely appellation of “shin of beef stewed,” is enough to give your genteel eater the locked jaw.
“Remember, when the judgment’s weak, the prejudice is strong.”
Our modern epicures resemble the ancient,309-* who thought the dearest dish must be the most delicious:
——“And think all wisdom lies In being impertinently nice.”
Thus, they reckon turtle and punch to be “sheventy-foive per shent” more inviting than mock turtle and good malt liquor: however bad the former may be, and however good the latter, we wish these folks could be made to understand, that the soup for each, and all the accompaniments, are precisely the same: there is this only difference, the former is commonly made with a “starved turtle” (see Notes at the foot of page 220), the latter with a “fatted calf.” See Nos. 247, 343, and 343*.
The scarcity of tolerably good cooks ceases to be surprising, when we reflect how much more astonishing is the ignorance of most of those who assume the character of scientific gourmands,309-† so extremely ignorant of “the affairs of the mouth,” they seem hardly to “know a sheep’s head from a carrot;” and their real pretensions to be profound palaticians, are as moderate as the wine-merchant’s cus[310]tomer, whose sagacity in the selection of liquors was only so exquisite, that he knew that Port wine was black, and that if he drank enough of it, it would make him drunk.