Need Help With This Recipe

[Capt. Hamp Cox]

Sonofabitch Stew
Ingredients

2 Pounds lean beef
Half calf heart
11/2 pounds calf liver
1 set sweetbreads
1 Set brains
1 set marrow gut
Salt & Pepper
Louisiana hot sauce
Kill a young steer. Cut up beef, liver and heart into 1" cubes; slice the marrow gut into small rings. Place in a Dutch oven or deep casserole. Cover meat with water and simmer for 2 - 3 hours. Add salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste. Take sweetbreads and brains cut in small pieces. Add to stew. Simmer another hour never boiling.

Serve.

There are many versions of this recipe none are known as the original only many versions of the above. GOOD LUCK with this one.

What is "marrow gut" or "margut" (I've seen both spellings), and what does it add to the flavor of the stew (I've read somewhere it is only used from a calf that hasn't yet started eating grass)?  Where would you obtain some (without butchering a calf)?  You can jump in here anytime, Del.

[Delmonico]

Well that is too simple, the marrow gut is the tube that connects the first and second stomach of an unweaned calf.  The is a bigc fancy name for it, but it is called a marrow gut in the unweaned calf cause it has undigested milk in it that looks like bone marrow.

Take that same first stomach and dry it and put a piece of in in yer milk and it will curdle it so you can make cheese. 

[Capt. Hamp Cox]

Thanks, Del.

Now, tell me what marrow gut contributes to flavor of the stew.

[Delmonico]

The curdled milk of course kinda like adding cottage cheese.  But I don't like SOB stew.

[Capt. Hamp Cox]

Thanks, Del.

[SIR WILLIAM]

There is not much taste to a calf. (veal)  The marrow gut has a filling more like ricotta cheese.  It adds only a bit of creamy texture to the stew.  There is a little bit of thickening to the stew from the whey.  This was a way to use everything and not waste any parts.  There wasn't any corn starch in a yellow box handy at the A&P either.  This recipe is being reconsidered for modern use.  If calves are used in this recipe,  there is 0 chance of mad cow prions.  The worst part is that calf brains are ^HIGH^ in cholesterol.

[Capt. Hamp Cox]

Appreciate that, SIR WILLIAM.

[Delmonico]

Sir William:  I will agree on one point, say I don't know on one and say wrong on another, all three referancing the cornstarch.

No A&P, just the local store, maybe know on yellow box, my brand is ligh brown and green anyway.  Yes on the cornstarch, from at least the early 1850's, it was often called corn flour.  Was a bit costly compared to today, but it was there, maybe not at every general store, but just telllygraph the wholesaler in Omaha and he will put it on the train and send it to ya, it can then be picked up at the nearest depot to ya.

What could be got in that time period will amaze you.

[SIR WILLIAM]

Yes.  I was thinking of killing a calf on a cattle drive.  My understanding is that SOB stew was a trail recipe.  I am always amazed when I read old or reprints of Sears, A&P, Monkey Ward and medical catalogues.  I spied a TENS unit the other day in an antique store.  It was about the size of a 27" TV and in a oak housing.  They had a primitive cell phone systen in the old portable telegraph.

[Delmonico]

It was often made as a trail recipe cause a young calf would often be a hindrance, better to kill it and eat it.

I also seems to have had a following as a Christmas dinner.  Charles Goodnight was said to have planned one for Christmas dinner, but he died a couple of days to soon.

[Capt. Hamp Cox]

The following is sort of a post script to this thread.  Found it in Come an' Get It, The Story of the Old Cowboy Cook, by Ramon F. Adams.

Ever' cowhand loves a stew, calf-fries, steaks, an' barbeque, but the stew that's best an' so almighty rich, is called on the range, a sonofabitch.
   We kill us a beef an' we take the heart an' then cut it up to get a good start; tallow an' tongue are then cut up too; it's startin' to look more like a good stew.  Ole Cookie then stirs it for quite a long while, an' then adds some liver with a taste of the bile.  He stirs it an' stirs it an' stirs it, so slow, then with sweetbreads and brain he makes 'im a dough.  With this in the pot it looks sort o' thin so he cuts up some meat an' throws 'er right in.  Then he stirs it an' cooks it an' puts in some salt with a lot o' good pepper an' then calls a halt.
   There's one little item, the secret of which makes our Cookie so proud of his sonofabitch.  Jes'step to one side while he stirs up his stew an' I'll whisper his secret to you an' to you.  There's a spot in a beef, be it heifer or steer, an' it's shore hard to find, it might take y'u a year.  Y'u think that I'm queer, y'u think I'm a nut?  Sonofabitch ain't no good without marrowgut.
                        Tex Taylor