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To Barbecue Shoat
The shoat should be kept in water until time to put it on to cook, then place in the oven with half a gill of water, rubbing it over with a little lard; dredge with flour; cook slowly, and when about done enough to remove from the fire, put a spoonful of butter to the gravy and pour over it half a cup of Walnut catsup.
A terse late-Victorian roasting formula that assumes you know what a shoat is and have a butcher who will sell you one. The instructions are sound, but almost every quantity and vessel needs translating.
- What a shoat isA shoat is a young pig, weaned but not yet grown; period usage is loose, covering anything from a recently weaned animal to a hog of under about a hundred pounds. No supermarket carries one. A 5-8 lb bone-in fresh ham or shoulder behaves the same way under the same treatment; a whole suckling pig from a specialist butcher is closer to the original intent.
- Half a gillA gill is half a cup, so half a gill of water is 1/4 cup. It goes in the pan, not on the meat, purely to keep the drippings from scorching before the fat renders. Top it up if the pan runs dry.
- "Cook slowly"The book gives no temperature. A moderate oven of around 325F suits the instruction, allowing roughly 20-30 minutes per pound depending on the joint. Cook to an internal 145F at the thickest point away from bone, then rest 15 minutes; a shoulder taken further, to 195F, will pull apart instead.
- The water soakThe recipe does not say why the shoat is held in water, and period reasons varied. Skip it either way — it waterlogs the skin and defeats the flour dredge. Keep the meat refrigerated until it goes in the oven and dry the surface well.
- Dredging with flourRub the lard on first, then dust the flour over it. The flour browns into a crust and, more usefully, thickens the drippings as they collect, which is why no separate roux appears later.
- Walnut catsupA dark, salty English condiment of green walnuts steeped in brine and vinegar with spices, and often anchovy — nothing like tomato ketchup. Mushroom ketchup is the closest survivor; a mix of Worcestershire sauce and a little balsamic approximates the sweet-savoury depth.
- Finishing the gravyA spoonful of butter and half a cup of walnut catsup go into the pan drippings off the heat, swirled rather than boiled, then poured over the meat. Boiling it hard will split the butter and turn the sauce harsh and salty.
- YieldThe original gives none. A 6 lb fresh ham treated this way serves eight to ten with the pan sauce.
"Barbecue" in a turn-of-the-century American household book often meant nothing more than a whole young animal cooked slowly and basted — the word carried the sense of the carcass and the occasion long before it meant smoke and a spice rub, and at least one recipe of this period applies it to oven roasting. Shoat was standard butcher's vocabulary, though the word's origin is uncertain, possibly related to a West Flemish or Low German term. The walnut catsup at the end is the older half of the ketchup family: green walnuts picked before the shell hardens, salted down and steeped with vinegar and spice, a condiment English cooks had been bottling since the 1700s and one that survived in American kitchens well past the point when tomato ketchup had taken over the name.