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Fresh Pork with Vegetables
1 pound pork butt
1 small red cabbage
4 large carrots
Seasoning
4 large parsnips
Boil the piece of pork one and one-half hours. Cook the vegetables in the same kettle until they are soft, then remove them and finish cooking the meat. Cut the pork into thin slices. Arrange them side by side down the middle of a large platter, and make a border of the cabbage, quartered, and the other vegetables cut into lengths.
A plain one-pot boiled dinner of the sort that turns up in every American household book of the period. The only real technique is staging the pot so nothing turns to mush.
- The cut"Pork butt" is the upper shoulder, not anything near the tail; it is sold today as Boston butt or pork shoulder. A single pound is a small piece for that cut, so buy a boneless section or expect to trim a larger one.
- Stage the potThe instruction to cook everything in the same kettle needs sequencing. Note that the vegetables go in whole here; they are only cut into lengths after cooking, so allow longer than you would for cut pieces -- roughly 20-30 minutes for the carrots and parsnips and rather less for the quartered cabbage. Test each with a knife and lift it out as it yields, then return the pork to finish.
- Simmer, do not boilAn hour and a half at a true rolling boil will leave shoulder stringy and dry. Hold the water at a bare shiver with the surface barely moving; the meat is done for slicing at about 160-170F internal.
- Red cabbage colourRed cabbage leaches purple into the broth and tints the parsnips grey-lavender. Cook it last, or in a separate pan with a splash of vinegar to hold its colour, if the platter's appearance matters.
- "Seasoning"The original leaves this entirely open; salt and pepper in the pot is the likeliest reading. Salt the water generously at the start so the meat is seasoned through, and consider a bay leaf, a few peppercorns and an onion.
- SlicingLet the pork rest 10 minutes out of the liquid before slicing, and cut across the grain. Boiled shoulder falls apart if sliced straight from the pot.
- YieldA pound of pork with four carrots and four parsnips serves three, perhaps four with bread. Save the cooking liquid; it is a decent light broth once skimmed.
Boiled dinners of fresh pork and root vegetables belong to the cold-weather end of the household year, when parsnips and storage carrots were what the cellar still held and a shoulder was among the cheapest cuts of a freshly killed pig. The word "fresh" in the title is doing real work: a recipe calling for unpreserved meat, rather than the salted, smoked or pickled pork that filled many household barrels, signalled either butchering season or access to a proper butcher shop. Butterick, better known for dress patterns, published its recipe collections for the same audience of practical home managers, and this entry is characteristic of them — one pot, four ingredients, and a final flourish of arrangement on a platter that costs nothing but attention.