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Spare-Rib Pot-Pie
Cut the spare-ribs once across and then in strips three or four inches wide, put on in kettle with hot water enough to cover, stew until tender, season with salt and pepper, and turn out of kettle; replace a layer of spare-ribs in the bottom, add a layer of peeled potatoes (quartered if large), some bits of butter, some small squares of baking-powder dough rolled quite thin, season again, then another layer of spare-ribs, and so on until the kettle is two-thirds full, leaving the squares of crust for the last layer; then add the liquor in which the spare-ribs were boiled, and hot water if needed, cover, boil half to three-quarters of an hour, being careful to add hot water so as not to let it boil dry. The crust can be made of light biscuit dough, without egg or sugar, as follows: Roll thin, cut out, let rise, and use for pie, remembering to have plenty of water in the kettle, so that when the pie is made and the cover on, it need not be removed until dished. If, after taking up, there is not sufficient gravy, add hot water and flour and butter rubbed together; season to taste, and serve. To warm over pot-pie, set it in a dripping-pan in the oven, add lumps of butter with gravy or hot water; more squares of dough may be laid on the top. -Mrs. W. W. W.
A layered kettle dish rather than a baked pie: the crust here is squares of dough steamed on top of the meat and potatoes. Two things decide whether it works — keeping the lid on and keeping the water up.
- Do not lift the lidThe dough squares cook in trapped steam. Every peek collapses them, which is why the original insists the cover stay on until you dish up. Start with enough liquid that you will not need to check.
- "Stew until tender" means longer than you thinkPork spare ribs cut across the rack need an hour or more at a bare simmer before the meat gives at the bone; judge by the meat rather than a clock. The half to three-quarters of an hour later in the recipe applies to the potatoes and crust, not the ribs.
- Buying the ribsA butcher will saw a full rack in half crosswise on request; ask for it. "Cut once across and then in strips three or four inches wide" gives short pieces two or three bones each, which layer far better than long ones.
- Two crusts, one choiceThe recipe offers baking-powder dough or "light biscuit dough," which is rolled, cut out and left to rise before it goes in the pot, implying a risen (probably yeast) dough. The baking-powder version is rolled thin, cut and used at once; the risen dough must be proved first, and the original gives no time for it.
- No egg, no sugarThis is a savoury biscuit dough: flour, salt, fat, leavening, milk or water. Modern sweetened biscuit or scone recipes will taste wrong against pork gravy.
- Layering and liquidTwo-thirds full is the working limit. Add the reserved cooking liquor and hot water as needed; the original wants plenty of liquid in the kettle, since the cover is not to come off and the pot must not boil dry.
- Thickening at the endButter and flour rubbed together is beurre manié. Work equal weights into a paste, drop it into the simmering gravy in small pieces and let it cook two or three minutes to lose the raw flour taste.
- YieldNo quantities are given: the measure is a kettle filled two-thirds. Skim the fat off the reserved liquor before it goes back in; spare ribs give up a good deal.
Pot-pie in nineteenth-century American usage meant a dish cooked in a pot, not an oven — the "pie" being the squares or strips of dough steamed over stewing meat, closer to what a modern cook would call dumplings. Buckeye Cookery (1877, compiled from Ohio housekeepers and printed with contributors' initials, as here with Mrs. W. W. W.) sits at the point where chemical leavening was displacing yeast in everyday baking, and the recipe hedges by offering both: quick baking-powder dough or the older risen biscuit dough. Spare ribs were a seasonal item in a pork-raising region, the leavings after hams, shoulders and side meat were salted down at killing time, and they had to be used fresh. The closing note on warming over the pot-pie in a dripping-pan, with fresh dough squares laid on top, is characteristic of the book's thrift: nothing in a farm kitchen was made only once.