Tomato Steak.
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 as good, if not better, heated over the next day.
Alamode Beef (in a plain way).
Take a thick piece of flank, or, if most convenient, the thickest part of the round, weighing six or eight pounds, for a small family of four or five persons. Cut off the strips of coarse fat upon the edge, make incisions in all parts, and fill them with a stuffing made of bread, salt pork chopped, pepper, and sweet marjoram. Push whole cloves here and there into the meat; roll it up, fasten it with skewers, and wind a strong twine or tape about it. Have ready a pot in which you have fried to a crisp three or four slices of salt pork; take out the pork, lay in the beef, and brown every side. When well browned, add hardly water enough to cover it, chop a large onion fine, add eighteen or twenty cloves, and boil it gently, but steadily, three or four hours, according to the size. The water should boil away so as to make a rich gravy, but be careful it does not burn. When you take up the beef, add browned flour to the gravy, if it needs to be thickened.
Another (more rich).
Take seven or eight pounds of the upper part of the round, cut off the coarse fat upon the side, and make deep incisions in every part. To a pint bowl of bread crumbs, put pepper, powdered clove, a small nutmeg, a teaspoonful of salt, some whole allspice, a large spoonful of butter, and, if you choose, a very little chopped salt pork, and two beaten eggs. Mix these ingredients well together, and fill the incisions, but reserve a part of the stuffing. Put in two or three skewers horizontally, near the edges, and tie twine across to keep in the stuffing. Push whole cloves into the meat here and there. Lay it, when thus prepared, into a bake-pan or stew-pan, having a lid which may be heated; put in water enough just to cover it, and set it where it will simmer, but not quite boil. Have the lid heated, and a few embers laid over it. After two hours, pour upon the top the stuffing which you reserved, heat the lid again, and cover the meat. Let it stew two hours more. If the gravy is too thin, add browned flour and boil it up again. Some persons use red wine, but it is very good without. Half the quantity of meat and stuffing for a small family.
Stewed Brisket of Beef.
Put three or four pounds of brisket into a kettle, and cover it with water. Take off the scum as it rises. Let it boil steadily two hours. Then take it from the pot and brown it with butter in a spider. When it is browned on every side, return it to the kettle, and stew it gently five hours more. Add more water if it boils away. Put in a carrot and a turnip or two, cut small, an onion also; a few cloves, and salt and pepper as you think necessary. Half an hour before dinner add tomato or mushroom catsup. To serve it, lay the beef upon a dish, and strew capers over it. The water in which it was stewed is a nice soup.
Stewed Tongue.
Boil a fresh tongue three hours, and if the skin does not easily come off, boil it longer. Remove the skin; strain the water in which it was boiled. Wash the pot, and return the tongue to it, with enough of the strained liquor to cover it. Put in it a carrot, a turnip, and an onion, cut fine, and a table-spoonful of powdered clove and also of ground pepper, tied up in muslin bags. Boil the tongue gently two hours and a half. About fifteen minutes before it is taken up, toast two slices of bread without the crust, cut it up in small bits, and put it into the pot. When you dish it up, put about a pint of the liquor and vegetables round the tongue in a fricassee dish.