Name: Scarlet Beef With Vegetables
Yield: Serves 8 to 10.
Cuisine: United States
Ingredients: ¼ pound (1 stick) butter, melted; ½ cup kosher or sea salt; 1 small Savoy cabbage; 6 of each: beets, small carrots, turnips, parsnips, and onions; 1 tablespoon allspice; ⅛ teaspoon mace; 2 bay leaves, crumbled; 2 tablespoons black pepper; 4 medium potatoes; 1 5-pound beef brisket; ⅓ cup brown sugar; optional: 1 teaspoon saltpeter; ½ teaspoon each salt and dried tarragon or thyme; ¼ cup each dry mustard and olive oil; 1 clove garlic, mashed; ½ cup wine vinegar; ½ cup minced parsley; cayenne pepper to taste; ¼ teaspoon black pepper

Preparation info

Serves
8 to 10
.

Difficulty
Medium

Appears in

I Hear America Cooking

By Betty Fussell

Published 1986

About

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