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Pork, Bladebone Of
The bladebone of pork from a full-grown bacon-hog, and from which nearly all the meat has been cut, may be taken. It is best broiled over a quick fire until the meat is done through. A minute before it is taken from the fire a little pepper and salt should be sprinkled over it. Serve on a hot dish, with a tea-spoonful of mustard mixed with a piece of butter the size of an egg laid upon the meat. Time to broil, ten to fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 8d. to 9d. per pound.
This is a dish built from a bone rather than a joint — the shoulder blade left after a side of pork has been cut down for bacon and hams, with only the shreds of meat clinging to it. Treat it as you would a rack of bones or a devilled offcut: high heat, short time, sharp seasoning.
- What the cut isThe bladebone is the scapula of the shoulder, roughly triangular and flat. A modern equivalent is asking a butcher for the blade bone after boning out a pork shoulder, or using well-trimmed pork ribs or a shoulder steak on the bone.
- "Bacon-hog"A bacon-hog was a mature pig raised long and lean for curing, as distinct from a young porker for fresh meat. The meat on such a bone is firm and well-flavoured; it needs no long cooking because there is so little of it.
- Broiling means grillingIn this book "broil" is cooking directly over a clear, glowing fire. Use a charcoal grill, a ridged grill pan over high heat, or an overhead broiler on its highest setting with the rack close to the element.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons — a generous amount for one bone. Mash the mustard into softened butter first so it melts over the meat as a sauce rather than sitting in a lump.
- Season at the end, as directedThe recipe has the pepper and salt going on only a minute before the bone leaves the fire. Whatever the author's reasoning, it suits thin scraps of meat: salt applied early draws moisture to the surface and they steam rather than brown.
- DonenessTen to fifteen minutes is right for a bone with only a thin covering of meat. Pork is safely cooked at 145F/63C with a short rest, though shreds this thin will be well past that by the time they crisp.
- MustardThe recipe says only 'mustard'; in this period that would most often mean English mustard made up from powder, which stands up to pork fat. Dijon works; a sweetened American mustard does not.
- YieldOne bladebone makes a single serving as a savoury or a light supper. The recipe specifies nothing beyond a hot dish and the mustard butter.
This entry is a piece of nineteenth-century thrift dressed up as a dish. On a farm or in a butcher's shop, a side of pork was cut down for bacon and hams, and the bones — blade, ribs, chine — came away with fragments of meat still attached, too little to sell as a joint but too good to render for lard. Grilled hard and served with mustard butter, they became "bones," a class of hot, highly seasoned dishes that Victorian and Edwardian households ate as a supper item or a savoury at the close of dinner; the devilled bone, with cayenne and mustard, belongs to the same family. Cassell's habit of quoting a probable cost — here 8d. to 9d. per pound — was aimed squarely at the household manager checking the butcher's book.