Sonofabitch stew (or son-of-a-bitch stew) was a

cowboy A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the '' vaqu ...

dish of the

American West The Western United States (also called the American West, the Far West, and the West) is the region comprising the westernmost states of the United States. As American settlement in the U.S. expanded westward, the meaning of the term ''the Wes ...

Recipes

Various recipes exist for this

beef Beef is the culinary name for meat from cattle (''Bos taurus''). In prehistoric times, humankind hunted aurochs and later domesticated them. Since that time, numerous breeds of cattle have been bred specifically for the quality or quantit ...

stew A stew is a combination of solid food ingredients that have been cooked in liquid and served in the resultant gravy. A stew needs to have raw ingredients added to the gravy. Ingredients in a stew can include any combination of vegetables a ...

, and some sources say its ingredients may vary according to whatever is on hand. Most recipes involve meat and

offal Offal (), also called variety meats, pluck or organ meats, is the organs of a butchered animal. The word does not refer to a particular list of edible organs, which varies by culture and region, but usually excludes muscle. Offal may also refe ...

from a

calf Calf most often refers to: * Calf (animal), the young of domestic cattle. * Calf (leg), in humans (and other primates), the back portion of the lower leg Calf or calves may also refer to: Biology and animal byproducts *Veal, meat from calves *C ...

, though, making sonofabitch stew something of a luxury item on the trail. Alan Davidson's 1999 book '' Oxford Companion to Food'' specifies meats and organs from a freshly killed unweaned calf, including the

brain A brain is an organ (biology), organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as Visual perception, vision. I ...

heart The heart is a muscular Organ (biology), organ in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as ca ...

liver The liver is a major organ only found in vertebrates which performs many essential biological functions such as detoxification of the organism, and the synthesis of proteins and biochemicals necessary for digestion and growth. In humans, it i ...

, sweetbreads,

tongue The tongue is a muscular organ in the mouth of a typical tetrapod. It manipulates food for mastication and swallowing as part of the digestive process, and is the primary organ of taste. The tongue's upper surface (dorsum) is covered by taste ...

, pieces of tenderloin, and an item called the "marrow gut" and much Louisiana hot sauce. This last item, the "marrow gut", was a key ingredient. Davidson quotes Ramon Adam's 1952 ''Come An' Get It: The Story of the Old Cowboy Cook'', which reports that this is a tube, between two of the calf's stomachs, filled with a substance resembling marrow, deemed edible only while the calf is young and still feeding on milk. This marrow-like substance was included in the stew and, according to Adams, was "what gave the stew such a delicious flavor". Davidson says this "marrow gut" probably was the passage leading to the abomasum as well as the abomasum itself (said to have a "distinctive flavour of

rennin Chymosin or rennin is a protease found in rennet. It is an aspartic endopeptidase belonging to MEROPS A1 family. It is produced by newborn ruminant animals in the lining of the abomasum to curdle the milk they ingest, allowing a longer resid ...

-curdled milk"). Another possibility is that "marrow gut" refers to the calf's thymus, more commonly known as "sweetbread". Sweetbread is indeed commonly found in traditional European cookery and many books refer to the use of this ingredient, including for the preparation of stews made with offal. In German it is called "Kalbsbries", in French "Ris de veau". A French book originally published in 1928 (Ali-Bab, an alias used by Henri Babinski: ''Gastronomie Pratique'') refers to a recipe involving sweetbread but also the spinal marrow ("cord"). Babinski is known for having traveled around the world. The stew also contained seasonings and sometimes

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus '' Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the on ...

. Babinski's recipe for eight guests contains the following ingredients, which cook together for about four hours at moderate heat in the oven, the excess of surfacing fat being removed before serving: * 2 pounds of flesh of a calf's head (including the ears, cut into slices) * 1 pound of liver, sliced (placed on top of the mix) * 1 pound of spinal marrow cut into pieces (idem) * 2 kidneys, sliced (idem) * 1 sweetbread, sliced (idem) * tongue (skin removed) and brains, all sliced (idem) * dry white wine (1/4 liter) * a strong veal broth (1/4 liter) * carrots, onions, tomatoes and a few green olives without stones * butter (to roast the sliced liver and kidneys before adding them to the mix) * some flour to thicken the sauce * lemon juice at the end, before serving * salt, pepper, spices Frank X. Tolbert's 1962 history of

chili con carne Chili con carne (also spelled chilli con carne or chile con carne and shortened to chili or chilli; ), meaning " chili with meat", is a spicy stew containing chili peppers (sometimes in the form of chili powder), meat (usually beef), tomatoes ...

, ''A Bowl of Red'', discusses sonofabitch stew as well. Tolbert suggests that the chuck wagon cooks borrowed the idea for the stew from the cooking of the

Plains Indians Plains Indians or Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies are the Native American tribes and First Nation band governments who have historically lived on the Interior Plains (the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies) of ...

. He also specifies a recipe that never includes onions, tomatoes, or potatoes.

Alternative names

In addition to "sonofabitch stew", the dish was known as "rascal stew" or "SOB stew", or fitted with the name of any unpopular figure at the time: for example, "Cleveland stew" in honor of

Grover Cleveland Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American ...

, a president in disfavor with the cowboys displaced from the

Cherokee Strip The Cherokee Outlet, or Cherokee Strip, was located in what is now the state of Oklahoma in the United States. It was a 60-mile-wide (97 km) parcel of land south of the Oklahoma-Kansas border between 96 and 100°W. The Cherokee Outlet wa ...

. "In the presence of ladies", reports a 1942 ''Gourmet'' magazine piece, the dish was commonly called "son-of-a-gun stew" instead.The ''Gourmet'' article is excerpted within thi
Barry Popik Blog Entry
of August 2, 2006. URL retrieved December 28, 2006. The "polite" name is used in the ''

Gunsmoke ''Gunsmoke'' is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman Macdonnell and writer John Meston. It centers on Dodge City, Kansas, in the 1870s, during the settlement of the American West. The central chara ...

'' episode "Long, Long Trail" in 1961 (7.6), also ''

'' Matt's Love Story in 1973 (19.3) and

Disney's The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...

1975 movie adaptation of '' The Apple Dumpling Gang''.

References

*{{cite book, author=Davidson, Alan, title=The Oxford Companion to Food, year=1999, publisher=Oxford University Press, isbn=0-19-211579-0, chapter=Sonofabitch Stew, pag
734
chapter-url-access=registration, chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordcompaniont00davi_0/page/734

Notes

American stews Cowboy culture Beef dishes Offal dishes

Recipes

Alternative names

See also

References

Notes