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Fried Pork Pot-Pie
Take off the fat and crack all the bones of a spare rib; boil till tender, removing the scum as it rises, and then season with salt and pepper. Thicken the gravy about one-half hour before serving. Put into another kettle all the bones and most of the gravy leaving just enough in the first pot to reach one-half inch above the rim on which the pot rests; put the crust or dough in, cover tightly to prevent any steam escaping and keep boiling continuously for three-fourths of an hour. Serve meat and crust from one dish with the gravy. To make the crust work into light dough a very small piece of butter; roll it out thin, cut into squares and leave on the molding board until very light.
A boiled pot-pie in the older American sense: no pastry lid browned in an oven, but squares of light dough steamed on top of simmering meat and gravy. Two details carry the dish — enough liquid to make steam, and a lid that never comes off.
- The hinge: keep the lid onThe dough squares cook entirely in trapped steam. Lifting the cover to check drops the temperature and gives you gummy, sodden crust. Set a timer for 45 minutes and leave it alone.
- "Spare rib" here means the whole rib sectionIn this period a pork spare rib was generally a large bony piece sold for boiling rather than the trimmed barbecue rack. A 3-4 lb rack of pork spareribs, cut into 3-4 rib sections, is the closest thing now; the recipe does not say why the bones are cracked, though it would help them fit the pot and give up more to the broth.
- An ambiguous measurement"Just enough [gravy] to reach one-half inch above the rim on which the pot rests" refers to some part of the pot that the text does not identify; it is not clear what is meant. In practice, read it as a shallow layer of liquid in the bottom of a wide heavy pot: enough to steam for 45 minutes without scorching.
- Boil, then don't"Keep boiling continuously" need not mean a hard rolling boil on a modern burner; use a steady, audible simmer. A hard boil will reduce the gravy away and risks burning the pot dry before the dough is done.
- Thickening the gravyThe recipe gives no quantities; roughly 1 to 2 tablespoons flour whisked into a little cold water or fat per cup of broth will thicken it. The original says to do this about half an hour before serving.
- "Until very light" means leavenedDough left on the board to become light is raised dough, most likely yeast. Rolled thin and cut into squares, it should rest until visibly puffed before it meets the steam.
- Doneness of the porkSimmering until tender takes 1 1/2 to 2 hours and puts the meat far past any food-safety concern; the goal is meat pulling from the bone. Season with salt and pepper only after skimming, as the original directs, since the broth concentrates.
- Yield and servingA 3-4 lb rib section with dough serves four to six. Serve as instructed, meat and crust together in one dish with the reserved gravy.
Pot-pie in nineteenth-century America was often a boiled dish rather than a baked one — closer to what Pennsylvania cooks still call bot boi, squares of dough simmered in broth, than to a pie with a pastry shell. The name survived even as ovens became reliable and the pastry version took over, which is why a recipe like this one can look mislabeled to a modern reader. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued cookbooks as part of a broad line of household guidance for middle-class women, and its meat chapter reflects the economy of an era when a spare rib was a cheap, bony cut bought for the broth as much as the meat.