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📝 Description
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74
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🥘 Ingredients
2 lbs. of shin of beef, 1 large onion or a few shalots, a little flour, a bunch of savoury herbs, 2 blades of mace, 2 or 3 cloves, 4 whole allspice, 1/4 teaspoonful of whole pepper, 1 slice of lean ham or bacon, 1/2 a head of celery (when at hand), 2 pints of boiling water; salt and cayenne to taste.
👨🍳 Method
Cut the beef into thin slices, as also the onions, dredge them with flour, and fry of a pale brown, but do not allow them to get black; pour in the boiling water, let it boil up; and skim. Add the remaining ingredients, and simmer the whole very gently for 2 hours, or until all the juices are extracted from the meat; put it by to get cold, when take off all the fat. This gravy may be flavoured with ketchup, store sauces, wine, or, in fact, anything that may give additional and suitable relish to the dish it is intended for.
📜 From Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management (1861). Public domain.
⭐ Reader Reviews
Honest opinions from readers who have explored this book.
This week, I dove into Mrs. Beeton's archives and tried my hand at Recipe 438, a slow-cooked beef dish that's a distant cousin to modern pot roasts. I found the method delightfully simple, and the use of mace and allspice gave the dish an intriguing, old-world charm. I tried it with shin of beef, but I bet a chuck roast would work beautifully today. What surprised me was how well the celery infused the broth with a subtle, sweet flavor—it's not an ingredient I typically associate with beef dishes. The result was a deeply comforting stew that's perfect for a weeknight cook looking to simmer something soulful on a chilly evening. I served it with some crusty bread to soak up the gravy, and it was just the thing after a long day. The next day, I dressed up the leftovers with a splash of red wine vinegar and called it a "stewed beef salad"—don't knock it till you've tried it!
