Scarlet Beef With Vegetables

Say “corned beef and cabbage” to anyone other than a Boston Irisher and the spirits sink. The New England boiled dinner of salt beef and vegetables in a pot can be a thing of beauty, like a French pot au feu, but for many the very name reeks of poverty. Say “scarlet beef,” on the other hand, as Mrs. Chad-wick calls it in her Home Cookery (1852), and spirits perk with suggestions of Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter