What are the ingredients of the famous “son-of-a-bitch” stew? According to some sources, the ingredients are “hair, horns, and holler.” The term is sometimes given as “hide, horn and holler.”
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American Cattle Trails, 1540-1900
by Garnet M. Brayer
published in cooperation with the American Pioneer Trails Association
Denver: Smith-Brooks Print Co.
1949
Pg. ?
As the cowboy says, “You throw ever’thing in the pot but the hair, horns, and holler.” The longer it is cooked the better it is.
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The American Thesaurus of Slang
by Melvin van den Bark and Lester V. Berrey
New York: Crowell
1953
Pg. 847:
county or district attorney, son-of-a-gun (stew), a dish made of “choice” pieces of a calf, which consists of “everything but the hair, horns and holler”
27 May 1960, Long Beach (CA) Press-Telegram, pg. B1, col. 7:
Item: Extra Cut Prime Rib, Kansas City’s finest, minus the hair, horns and holler.
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The Cowboy Encyclopedia
by Richard W. Slatta
W. W. Norton & Company
1994
Pg. 142;
Almost any beef cut imaginable went into the legendary “son-of-a-bitch stew.” (In polite company, cowboys would call the dish “son-of-a-gun” stew.) As Ramon F. Adams notes, “You throw everything in the pot but the hair, horns, and holler.”
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More Texas Sayings Than You Can Shake a Stick At
by Anne Dingus
Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing Company
1996
Pg. 42:
Everything but the hair, horns, and holler.
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Doctor Yank: Memoirs of a Military Dentist
by Dr. Robert Reiss
Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing Company
2000
Pg. 46:
The fact is that the Baroness disappeared hide, horn and holler and has not been heard from to this day.
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Dictionary of the American West
by Winifred Blevins
Sasquatch Books
2001
Pg. 355:
SON-OF-A-BITCH STEW A spicy stew of marrowgut from a freshly killed calf, said to have gotten started because calves couldn’t keep up on trail drives and so were expendable. Adams says that the liver, tongue, kidneys, heart, sweetbreads, and brains were used, plus any vegetables that were handy. Jean Burroughs writes in New Mexico magazine that it “contained the “hair, horns and holler.”