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Pork, Stewed with Vegetables
Cut the heart of a large savoy into quarters. Put these into a large iron stewpan with half a dozen carrots cut into lengths, three turnips halved, eight moderate-sized whole potatoes, and two pounds of fresh pork with more lean than fat in it. Season with pepper and salt, pour over them a pint of nicely-flavoured stock, cover the saucepan closely, and let them stew as gently as possible until done enough. Serve the pork on a hot dish with the vegetables neatly arranged round it. Pour part of the gravy over the meat, and send the rest to table in a tureen. Time to stew, from two and a half to three hours. Probable cost, 3s. Sufficient for five or six persons. PORK, STUFFING FOR. (See ONION AND SAGE STUFFING FOR GOOSE, DUCK, OR PORK.)
A one-pot braise of the plainest kind: fresh pork shoulder buried in winter vegetables with barely enough liquid to steam them. A few of the quantities and the sequence need attention.
- The pint of stockAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, about 2½ cups. That is not enough to cover the food, and it should not be — the vegetables release a great deal of water under a tight lid, and the point is a concentrated gravy rather than a soup.
- "Fresh pork"This means uncured pork, as opposed to the salt pork and bacon that dominated Victorian larders. Shoulder or butt, bone in or out, is the cut that suits three hours of gentle stewing; loin will be dry long before then.
- Add the potatoes laterEight whole potatoes sitting in liquid for three hours will collapse into the gravy. Put them in for the last 45 minutes if you want them to arrive whole, as the serving instruction assumes.
- Savoy heartOnly the dense pale centre is used; the recipe says nothing about what became of the outer leaves. Quartered savoy holds together well through long cooking, unlike white cabbage, which turns to strings.
- "As gently as possible"The hinge of the dish. A bare tremble, not a simmer — at a rolling boil the pork tightens and the vegetables break up. The recipe assumes a stewpan on the fire; if you prefer, a heavy pot in a low oven (roughly 300–325F) will hold the same bare tremble more steadily than a burner.
- The iron stewpanA cast-iron Dutch oven with a well-fitting lid is the direct descendant. If the lid is loose, lay a sheet of parchment or foil under it, since the recipe depends on trapped steam.
- Doneness"Done enough" for shoulder means fork-tender, around 195F internally, well past the 145F safe point. Two and a half to three hours is realistic for a 2 lb piece.
- Yield and costFive or six servings, as stated. The 3s. figure is late-Victorian retail and belongs to the book's habit of costing every dish for a household budget.
Cassell's places this among its plain pork entries, and it is essentially a British reading of the same idea as a French potée or a New England boiled dinner: cheap meat and root vegetables cooked slowly in one vessel so that nothing is wasted and one fire does all the work. The savoy, carrot, turnip and potato list is the standard winter market basket of the period, and the pork is fresh rather than the salted or smoked pork that kept without refrigeration, since uncured pork was traditionally eaten in the colder months. The instruction to arrange the vegetables around the meat and send the remaining gravy in a tureen shows that even a peasant-style stew was expected to be dished up presentably. The cross-reference to onion and sage stuffing at the end is the dictionary's alphabetical scaffolding showing through, not part of the recipe.