Turnbull's Famous BAR-B-Q Roast Beef

Faithful Soup correspondant Harsh Betty should seriously consider changing her name to Harsh Betty Crocker - seems that cooking is in her blood. Here she shares with us some of her family history:

Dear Soup Lady,
I was looking for my dad's recipe for Beans and Rice when I found a bunch of recipes my grandfather developed while he was working in a restaurant during the Depression. He was a chemist, and this represented quite a step down for him, but work was work. Besides, what is cooking but chemistry?
Harsh Betty

History
By the spring of 1936, the Sunny Farms Restaurant food and service had "gone down hill", so about May, 1936, owner Jim Turnbull hired Denton J. Smith, Jr. (Denny) to take over as manager of Turnbull's Sunny Farms Restaurant and Dairy Bar in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Jim Turnbull asked Denny to make Sunny Farms a first class operation.

One thing that Denny did immediately was to hire an unemployed Chemical Engineer, Bill Minnick, husband of his sister, Barbara Smith Minnick to develop unique and delicious new recipes for the restaurant. Several recipes Bill developed during May and June of '36 that have survived include the Roast Beef BAR-B-Q recipes: this pair of recipes includes the beef "Basting Liquid" which was "mopped" onto the surface of the beef toward the end of the roasting, and a separate, unique BAR-B-Q sauce which was spread onto the sliced beef in the BAR-B-Q sandwich. Bill also developed the uniquerecipe for Hot Fudge Sauce for ice cream Sundaes which was used exclusively thereafter at Sunny Farms.

Turnbull's Famous BAR-B-Q ROAST BEEF
Developed by Wm J. Minnick, May-June 1936

Part 1: Basting Liquid (for Beef Roasting process)
2 ½ lbs. butter
2 qts. apple (cider) vinegar
1 pt. water
1 tsp. dry mustard
½ cup minced onion
1 bottle Worcestershire sauce (Lea & Perrins)
1 pt. chili sauce
1 pt. tomato catsup
2 juice of 2 lemons
½ lemon whole (seeded)
3 cloves garlic chopped fine and tied in a bag
2 tsp. sugar

Mix altogether; cook to season well. Baste meat with mop. Apply Wen meat is ¾ done. Keep (basting liquid) hot..

Part 2: Barbecue Sauce (spread on Roast Beef Sandwiches)
½ cup apple (cider) vinegar
2 tsp. (level) French's Mustard
Dash Tobasco Sauce
Dash Lea & Perrins (Worcestershire) Sauce
2 cups tomato juice
2 oz butter
(Dash) salt

Stew a clove of garlic in tomato juice before adding juice to mixture.

Thanks, Betty, for generously sharing this recipe. Betty herself is a vegetarian but she does not begrudge those who partake of the cow every now and then.

Comments

[Bill]

The sauce in part 2 looks a little thin. Does it have to be reduced?

[Harsh Betty]

It is indeed thin, but when I remember eating this as a kid, it was spread on the bread (much as one would use, say, mustard) rather than used to soak the meat pieces in.

Although I don't think there'd be anything wrong with reducing it, just for the heck of it (let me know if you do this and how it turns out!).