The Fireless Cook Book / A Manual of the Construction and Use of Appliances for Cooking by Retained Heat, with 250 Recipes

by Margaret Johnes Mitchell

Beef à la Mode

• 3 lbs. beef from the round
• 1 oz. fat, salt pork
• 2 teaspoons salt
• ¹⁄₄ teaspoon pepper
• Flour
• 1 onion
• ¹⁄₈ teaspoon allspice
• ¹⁄₈ teaspoon nutmeg
• 6 cloves
• 2 tablespoons rendered beef fat
• Water to nearly cover it

Wash the meat, lard it with the pork cut into strips, or gash it deeply and insert the pork in the gashes. Dredge it with the salt, pepper, and flour, and fry it in the beef fat till well browned on all sides. Put the meat and other ingredients into a two or three quart cooker-pail or pan, and nearly cover the meat with boiling water. Let it simmer for half an hour, then stand the pail in a larger cooker-pail of boiling water and put it into a cooker for from nine to twelve hours. Unless several times this recipe is cooked at once, do not allow the meat to cook more than twelve hours, or it may ferment. Reheat it before serving. Strain and thicken the gravy.

Serves ten or twelve persons.