The oldest known stew was simmered in Japan some 7,000 years ago
Around 5000 BC, Jomon cooks in Japan set pointed clay pots into the embers of their fires and simmered seafood that changed with the seasons. It is the earliest stew anyone has found. The trick they relied on still works: low, wet heat turns the toughest, cheapest meat tender.
A stew is solid food cooked in liquid and eaten with the gravy that forms. The liquid may be water or stock, sometimes with a splash of wine, and the pot is kept at a simmer rather than a boil so that flavours blend. That gentle, moist heat suits the least tender cuts, which is why stewing has always been a way to eat well cheaply. Marbled meat with plenty of connective tissue turns out juicy; very lean meat tends to dry out.
Those Jomon pots had conical or rounded, tapering bases that settled into the ash and soil of a hearth. Elsewhere people improvised: Amazonian groups boiled turtle entrails and other ingredients inside the turtle's own shell. The Roman cookbook attributed to Apicius, thought to date from the fourth century AD, includes pork and fish stews, and the early fourteenth-century French chef Taillevent recorded several ragouts in Le Viandier. In fourteenth-century England, beef stew with dumplings counted as a national dish.
Cooks thicken a stew by letting it reduce, by flouring meat before searing it, or with a roux or beurre manie, a paste of equal parts fat and flour; cornstarch and arrowroot also work. French tradition separates white stews, such as blanquettes of veal or lamb that are never browned, from brown stews in which red meat is seared first and cooked with browned vegetables, stock and wine.
Almost every cuisine has its own version. Belgium's carbonade flamande braises beef and onions in beer, and Georgia's chakapuli pairs lamb with tarragon, coriander and white wine. Some variants tell a story: crow stew, enriched with sour cream, was eaten in the United States during the Great Depression, and Cincinnati chili was created by Macedonian immigrants.
Source: Stew
