Rufus Estes’ Brunswick Stew – Good Things to Eat, 1911 – Black Foodie Finder

A Pullman Chef’s Slow-Simmered Chicken Stew With Corn, Butter Beans and Tomatoes

Brunswick stew is a cold-weather pot, and this is how a professional cooked it in 1911: a good fat hen simmered slowly with fresh corn cut from the cob, butter beans and chopped tomatoes, finished with strips of pastry dropped in as dumplings. There is almost no seasoning beyond salt and pepper because the vegetables and the long, slow cooking do the work.

Rufus Estes learned his trade cooking for the Pullman Company’s private railroad cars, where the passengers were presidents, industrialists and touring celebrities. In 1911 he published his own cookbook in Chicago, one of the first by a Black chef in America. We have kept his recipe as he wrote it and added our notes for the modern kitchen below.

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken, preferably a good fat hen, cut up
• Cold water to cover
• Salt and pepper
• 6 ears fresh sweet corn (“green corn”), kernels split and cut from the cob
• 1 pint shelled butter beans (baby lima beans), fresh or frozen
• 6 large tomatoes, chopped fine
• A little onion, chopped (optional)
• Strips of pie pastry, for dumplings

Makes: 6 to 8 servings (our estimate; the book gives no yield)

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Put the cut-up chicken in a large pot, cover with cold water, and season with salt and pepper.
2. Cook slowly until the chicken is about half done, roughly 30 to 40 minutes at a bare simmer.
3. Add the corn, splitting through the kernels before cutting them off the cob so the milk of the corn goes into the pot.
4. Add the butter beans and the chopped tomatoes, and a little onion if you like.
5. Cook very slowly until the vegetables are thoroughly done, stirring now and then so nothing catches on the bottom.
6. Roll out pastry, cut it into strips, drop them into the stew, and cook five minutes more.
7. Taste for salt and pepper and serve hot in bowls.

Pro Tips & Suggestions

• Split the kernels before you cut them. Running a knife down each row of kernels before slicing them off releases the starchy corn milk, which thickens the stew without flour.
• Low and slow is the whole recipe. Estes says “very slowly, so as to avoid burning” for a reason. Tomatoes and corn scorch easily once the pot thickens. Keep it at a lazy bubble and stir the bottom.
• The pastry strips are the dumplings. Use plain pie dough rolled thin and cut into short strips, the same rolled dumplings you would drop in chicken and dumplings. Five minutes is enough.
• His own substitutions. Estes says fresh pork can stand in for the chicken and canned vegetables for the fresh, which makes this an easy pantry stew when corn and tomatoes are out of season.
• Better the next day. Like most Brunswick stews, this one thickens and deepens overnight. Thin it with a little water or broth when you reheat.

About the Creator

Rufus Estes was born enslaved in Murray County, Tennessee, in 1857. By his own account he went to work in a Nashville restaurant at sixteen, and in 1883 he entered the Pullman Company’s private car service, where he cooked for the wealthiest travelers in the country for fourteen years. He later served as chef to the subsidiary companies of the United States Steel Corporation in Chicago.

In 1911 he published Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus at his own expense, opening it with a short sketch of his life and this portrait. The book holds nearly 600 recipes, from railroad dining car dishes to plain Southern cooking, and it is widely described as the first cookbook published by a Black chef in the United States.

Where to Find This Recipe

This recipe is retyped from page 23 of Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus: A Collection of Practical Recipes for Preparing Meats, Game, Fowl, Fish, Puddings, Pastries, Etc. by Rufus Estes (Chicago, published by the author, 1911). The book is in the public domain and can be read in full at the Internet Archive.

The portrait of Estes is the frontispiece of the same book. We show every historical image exactly as it appears in the source.