Take two pounds of beef; cut it in small strips, and put it into the pot with seven medium-sized tomatoes. Stew it very slowly. Add a dessert spoonful of sugar, salt, a little clove, and, just before you take it up, a dessert spoonful of butter. If you have tomato catsup, add a little, and if you like chopped onion, that also. Very tender beef is, of course, to be preferred; but that which is tough becomes more palatable in this than in almost any other way. This dish is quite good, if not better, heated over the next day.

Note: This is a CWCB Recommended Recipe. For a closer look at how to prepare this dish, see our results in the Tutorial.

Comments: This is a spectacularly easy dish to make, with the most complicated parts being the cutting up of the meat into "small strips" and the making of a batch of period tomato catsup. We--and this includes the non-onion-lovers among us--strongly endorse the addition of chopped onion to the recipe as it helps provide variation in both taste and texture to an otherwise rather overwhelmingly tomato-y dish.

Source: Mrs. Cornelius: The Young Housekeeper's Friend; Taggard and Thompson, Boston, 1863

BEEF STEAKS STEWED

Ingredients:

Cheap steaks
Butter
Beef stock, or water
Salt
Pepper
1 tbs. vinegar
Flour

Recipe:
This is a very good and economical way of cooking steaks that are not very tender. Put the steaks in a stew-pan with a little butter, and fry them brown. Then add a little gravy or boiling water, some pepper, salt, and a table-spoonful of vinegar, and let them stew gently till tender. Thicken the gravy with a bit of butter rolled in flour.

Comments:
It is nice to see a cookbook that admits that not all products sold as "steaks" are paragons of tender virtuousness. The product was no doubt vastly worse in Mrs. Hale's day considering the complete absence of corn-fed beef, USDA inspection of meat producers, or refrigeration.

Source: The Good Housekeeper by Sarah Josepha Hale, 1841

POTTED BEEF

Ingredients:

Round or other piece of beef
Salt
Pepper
Allspice
Cloves
Mace
Nutmeg
Melted butter

Recipe:
Take a good piece of a round of beef, and cut off all the fat. Rub the lean well with salt, and let it lie two days. Then put it into a jar, and add to it a little water in the proportion of half a pint to three pounds of meat. Cover the jar as closely as possible, (the best cover will be a coarse paste or dough) and set it in a slow oven, or in a vessel of boiling water for about four hours. Then drain off all the gravy and set the meat before the fire that all the moisture may be drawn out. Pull or cut it to pieces and pound it for a long time in a mortar with pepper, allspice, cloves, mace, nutmeg, and oiled fresh butter, adding these ingredients gradually, and moistening it with a little of the gravy. You must pound it to a fine paste, or till it becomes of the consistence of cream cheese.

Put it into potting cans, and cover it an inch thick with fresh butter that has been melted, skimmed, and strained. Tie a leather over each pot, and keep them closely covered. Set them in a dry place.

Comments:
This produces, in essence, a spiced beef pate. The technique of covering the material with a thick layer of butter (melted lard was also used) was intended to serve as a preservative by sealing out contact with the air. As this doesn't help protect the butter from similar deterioration, we suggest refrigeration and using the product within a sensible time frame, as in days rather than months.

Source: Directions for Cookery, Eliza Leslie, Philadelphia, 1840

CONTRIBUTED RECEIPTS. BY AN OLD HOUSEKEEPER.

ELEGANT FRITTERS.— Take eight eggs, sixteen tablespoonfuls of flour, a little salt, and milk sufficient to make a batter. Mix and fry in butter. Eat with sugar and cinnamon.

JEFFERSON CAKE.— Butter one pound, sugar one pound, flour two pounds, a little salt, soda, quarter of an ounce, one grated nutmeg, a little cinnamon, and milk sufficient to form a dough. Cut into cakes, and bake.

A WEST-POINT PUDDING.— One pound sheep's-tongue chopped fine, half pound suet chopped fine, five ounces of sugar, one tablespoonful of butter, one pound of potatoes boiled. Mix all well together and bake about four hours.

UNION PUDDING.— Take one cup of white sugar, three tablespoonfuls of flour, two eggs, one grated nutmeg, and one good-sized cocoanut grated fine, two teacupfuls of new milk and a tablespoonful of good fresh butter. Bake like tarts, without an upper crust.

MR. GODEY: I have a way of my own for BREAD making, and I like my own way sometimes, in this particular always. If it is deemed worthy a place in the Book by you, you are welcome to so use it. It is as follows:-

Save a gill of bread dough made with hop yeast, cover it tightly and place it in a cool room or cellar until baking day; then make a sponge of it by adding warm water and flour, and a good teaspoonful of sugar. This should be done early in the morning. When the sponge is very light, mix the bread as usual with warm milk, or water, and a teaspoonful of soda or saleratus, and when light bake. This always insures light, sweet bread, and entirely does away with yeast making. Of course a piece of dough must be saved out each time. L.M.S.

CREAM CHEESE.— The cream cheese we make at home is much admired. We put a quart of cream into a clean jug, with half a teaspoonful of salt stirred in, and let it stand a day or two till thickish. Then we fold an ordinary glass cloth about six or eight times, and sprinkle it with salt, then lay it in a sieve about eight inches in diameter. The sides of the cloth should come up well over the sieve. Then pour in the cream, and sprinkle a little salt on it. Change the cloth as often as it becomes moist, and as the cheese dries press it with the cloth and sieve. In about a week or nine days it will be prime and fit to eat. The air alone suffices to turn the cream into cheese. Another: Take about half a pint of cream, tie it up in a piece of thin muslin, and suspend it in a cool place. After five or six days take it out of the muslin, and put it between two plates, with a small weight on the upper one. This will make it a good shape for the table, and also help to ripen the cheese, which will be fit to use in about eight days from the commencement of the making. E.

Source: ITEM #7719; April, 1865, Godey's Lady's Book,Vol LXX Page 369

***Some of these recipes are from Civil War Cookbooks. The recipes are free and the owners of the website have prepared these recipes before, hence, the comments underneath the recipes.

The recipes that have the source of Godey's are from a personnal collection of Godey's Lady's Magazine***