Sunday dinner — the grand Sunday meal
New England Boiled Dinner
FestiveDocumented🧂 🍄moyen3 h 30
A piece of corned beef gently poached with cabbage, carrots, turnips, and potatoes. A single, generous, communal dish where everything cooks in the same broth.
Sunday dinner — the grand Sunday meal
A piece of corned beef gently poached with cabbage, carrots, turnips, and potatoes. A single, generous, communal dish where everything cooks in the same broth.
On Sunday, after church, the family gathered around the boiled dinner, and it was the great event of the week. I would put the beef to poach early in the morning, very gently — never at a rolling boil, or the meat becomes tough and that's wasting the grace of a good piece. The vegetables were added in order, the hardest first, and the aroma filled the whole house. At table, we said grace, and we ate in silence, grateful.
Ingredients
- •Corned beef brisket — a nice piece (meat)
- •Cabbage — one, cut into wedges (vegetable)
- •Turnips and carrots — a bunch of each (root vegetables)
- •Potatoes — as many as needed (starch)
- •Peppercorns and bay leaf — a few (aromatics)
How it was made : Beef was preserved all winter in a brine with large grains of salt ("corns" of salt, hence corned beef). The one-pot meal simmered for hours on the wood stove, and the broth often served as soup the next day — nothing was wasted.
Sources : Fannie Farmer, The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, 1896