Stufato (A Neapolitan receipt)

Instructions

1. Take about six pounds of the silver side of the round, and make several deep incisions in the inside, nearly through to the skin.
2. Stuff these with all kinds of savoury herbs, a good slice of lean ham, and half a small clove of garlic, all finely minced and well mingled together.
3. Bind and tie the meat closely round, so that the stuffing may not escape.
4. Put four pounds of butter into a stewpan large enough to hold something more than that quantity and the beef in addition.
5. So soon as it boils, lay in the meat; let it just simmer for five or six hours, turning it every half hour at least so that it may be equally done.
6. Boil three pounds of pipe maccaroni for twenty-five minutes and drain it perfectly dry.
7. Mix it with the gravy of the beef (without the butter), half a pint of very pure salad oil, and a pot of paste tomatas. Mix these to amalgamation without breaking the maccaroni.
8. Before serving up, sprinkle Parmesan cheese thickly on the maccaroni.
9. Acton's observations: she prints the receipt exactly as it was given to her. From her own slight experience of it she supposes the excellence of the beef is quite a secondary consideration, as all its juices are drawn out by this mode of cooking and appropriated to the maccaroni; and she observes that three pounds of maccaroni would make too gigantic a dish for an ordinary English service.
10. She has also seen directions elsewhere for making stufato with the upper part of the sirloin, thickly larded with large well-seasoned lardoons of bacon, and then stewed in equal parts of rich gravy and of red or white wine.