welcome friends welcome back to Sunday morning in the old cook book show today
we're going to do a recipe out of the Lorraine cooking cookbook and it's not a
crazy recipe it's a pot roast and I chose this recipe for two reasons one I
really wanted to have a pot roast for dinner tonight and the second is this
cookbook this is this is one of those cookbooks that sort of shows you a
turning point in the history of kitchens in North America kitchens in general so
this is the sixth printing from 1928 the first printing was in 1924 and I'm gonna
read you a little bit from the preface just sort of give you an idea of what
this cookbook is all about this book has been written and published expressly for
users of gas ranges equipped with the Lorraine oven heat regulator it is
undoubtedly the first cookbook devoted exclusively to time and temperature oven
cooking that is Lorraine cooking this is the method sponsored by the American
stove company following the invention of the Lorraine oven heat regulator so the
Lorraine oven heat regulator was the first time in history that you could set
the temperature on your oven you could set the temperature of your oven to 350
degrees it would heat to 350 degrees and it would hold it at 350 degrees and
that's something that right now in 2019 sounds ridiculously simple especially
since there's ovens at this point connected to Wi-Fi that you can regulate
from your cell phone the whole idea that 1924 to 1928 was the beginning of this
process just seems completely wacky to me anyway you would have thought that
that would have happened earlier but it didn't and even in 1928 when this book
was published I'm sure that there were a lot of people that still didn't have an
oven that was gas or electric they were probably still cooking with wood or coal
which is and of itself kind of crazy as well so into this pot the first
ingredient is it calls for some meat fat so I have lard that I rendered from the
pig in the cutting up the pig series and
next is this piece of beef and so I'm just gonna salt and pepper and flour on
both sides and then we're going to fry it off and just give it a little bit of
browning
now we're just looking for a little bit of browning on the outside of the meat
and spin it to get all sides and you're gonna get a little bit of Fond in the
bottom and that's what we're looking for now this recipe says to put a rack in
the bottom of your kettle and buy kettle they mean Dutch oven probably more than
likely and a lot of new dutch ovens like this enameled one don't come with a rack
that goes in the bottom and so in some of my older bare-metal ones there's this
little trivet or rack tiny little feet and you put it in the bottom and it just
holds the piece of meat up off of the bottom so that the liquid can circulate
all the way around it and I find that you get a much better cook with that so
I put that in the bottom and then I'm gonna put the meat back in now next it
calls for some pretty basic vegetables so some carrots and you just Nestle them
around the outside celery as well same sort of thing just put it around and
onions and just get the onions in wherever you can just get the last of
those in it also calls for parsley and so this is a this is a very basic pot
roast recipe you're covering most of the flavor basics with this and for pot
roast it really doesn't need to be that complicated I mean you can go very
easily because you're supposed to taste the roast the meat is the star of this
dish next in a little bit more salt and pepper and just kind of sprinkle that
all over the top it also asks for tomatoes so these are our home canned
tomatoes from our own garden asks for about a cup which is half a jar so I'm
going to put that in and just sort of pour that around the outside
close enough maybe a little too much I don't think that's really going to
matter all that much now here's the secret to this recipe
you've preheated your oven to the right temperature you just stick this pot into
the oven and you forget about it you don't have to worry about stoking the
fire adding more wood adding more coal you don't have to worry if it's too hot
or too cool and for the first time in history you can
bake according to time and temperature which was a huge leap forward so we're
gonna give this a few hours and we'll come back and have a pot roast pot roast
Jules so I thought that makes me giggle because of course
legend has it and the folklore of Glenn from Glenn's mom says that he was 10
years old and he went downstairs and made a pot roast when she was sick one
day that is the legend is the first full family meal that I ever collected I was
I was probably 10 I probably was 10 not far off
so I mean pot roast classic it is it is a classic so a little bit at the end of
this I took the liquid in the pot that was left in the pot I made a little bit
of a slurry of flour and water and I made a gravy some gravy and it's a very
basic pot roast it really is a very basic part roast but I think that you
threw the onions that always adds flavor yeah
and I think really this one this video really is more about the story of the
very first temperature control and how you know in 1928 this was a brand-new
thing so it's actually says like a degree yeah Wow so it tells you the slow
oven or is this or a good oven or a fast oven they claim that this is the very
first cookbook that gives you a temperature and a time for every recipe
giant leap forward well but and but then you notice and the in the in the books
that we've got from the 30s and 40s you know right up until after World War two
a lot of our recipe books are still saying slow oven because people still
had wood ovens still had wood ovens or coal fired ovens yeah my mr. horn cooked
on a wood stove I had friends that I went to school with that their parents
their mothers hooked on a wood stove I heard a documentary on the CBC Radio
mm-hmm about electricity in Ontario and a lot of farmer rural areas didn't have
electricity until the 1970s well we've had it before then but yeah but but
still so you know there's just to the change and so you know even
in my lifetime there would have been people that this was but the other thing
I find interesting though is that with this addition of this knowledge into
this that other knowledge is lost mm-hmm right so it's kind of interesting how
that works it's kind of like our inability to know anybody's phone number
now because you don't need to know it you don't need to know it I am and so
this this that's an interesting point because this does start that now cycle
of nobody can just look at a recipe and say I'm going to shove it in the oven at
a moderate temperature and it's gonna maybe take about this amount of time
because now you need to be told exactly because we've lost the skill
I'm just knowing what it's done of intuition I guess is that intuition
we've we've lost that that intuition of how to cook and and what to expect as
something cooks but that being said I don't if you cook a lot I bake a lot I
know by smell in the house when when it's done it's like oh and all those
those should be done I that smells like it's done and you know you walk over
it's like I made out laughs I should go check it yeah yeah so um free basic pot
roast I mean you can do this up as I normally put a little bit of horseradish
horseradish instant coffee and Marmite in mine because that really brings those
bass notes in and we've got three or four really good pot roast recipes on
the channel so I will link to those below and this is a great starting point
I mean the meat is nice the vegetables are nice enjoy enjoy thanks for stopping
by see you guys soon
you