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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-ple, 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 one-kettle braise of pork ribs, potatoes and dumplings, with the dumplings steamed under a lid rather than boiled in the liquid. Most of the recipe is straightforward; a few of its assumptions are not.
- Keep the lid onThis is the hinge. The top layer of dough cooks in trapped steam, and lifting the cover drops the temperature and gives you pale, gummy squares. Start with enough liquid that you will not need to check, and leave it alone for the full 30 to 45 minutes.
- Two doughs, two methodsThe recipe offers baking-powder dough or "light biscuit dough," which in 1880s usage meant a yeast-raised dough — hence the instruction to let the cut squares rise. Baking-powder squares go straight into the kettle. Do not let baking-powder dough sit and rise; it will only go flat.
- The meatPork spare-ribs, cut once across and then into strips three or four inches wide as the recipe directs; ask the butcher, or use a heavy cleaver. Figure roughly 3 to 4 lb for a kettle that ends up two-thirds full.
- First stewing"Stew until tender" means roughly 1 to 1½ hours at a bare simmer, until the meat gives at the bone but has not fallen off it. A hard boil clouds the liquor and toughens the meat; keep it just trembling.
- Skim before layeringSpare-ribs throw a good deal of fat. The original does not mention skimming, but the cooking liquor will otherwise be greasy enough to slick the dumplings. Let it settle a few minutes and lift the fat off before pouring it back over the layers.
- PotatoesQuartered floury potatoes, about 2 lb. They break down somewhat and help body the gravy, which is part of the point; waxy potatoes stay stubbornly intact.
- The finishing gravy"Flour and butter rubbed together" is what a French kitchen calls beurre manié: roughly equal parts worked to a paste and whisked into the simmering liquid in small pieces. About two tablespoons of each will lightly thicken three cups or so.
- YieldProbably serves six to eight as written. The reheating instruction -- dripping-pan in the oven, fresh butter, fresh dough squares on top -- calls for a moderate oven; the recipe gives no temperature.
Pot-pie in nineteenth-century American usage often meant no pie at all in the modern sense: no dish, no bottom crust, no oven. It was a kettle of meat and dough squares steamed together over the fire, closer to what a later cook would call chicken and dumplings, and the word "crust" here means the rolled squares rather than a lid of pastry. The form travelled widely in Pennsylvania German and Midwestern kitchens, where the dish is still called bot boi. Spare-ribs suit a late-autumn dish, tied to hog-killing time, when fresh pork was briefly abundant and the cheaper cuts were used before the rest went into brine or the smokehouse. The Dixie Cook Book, like many compilations of its era, credits the recipe to a contributor by initials -- Mrs. W. W. W. -- such books commonly being pooled from contributors rather than written by a single author.