Salt Pork and Beef Pie - 18th Century Cooking

Salt pork is one of the most misunderstood food  ingredients of our 18th century time period   they ate tons and tons and tons of salt pork the  question is how do you cook it? what do you use it   in? you know if you dig around in the cookbooks  in the 18th century English you know American   cookbooks you don't find salt pork showing up  very often well today's recipe is an American   recipe from 1796 it includes salt pork and I think  it'll give us a great idea of just how salt pork   shows up in certain kinds of recipes today's  recipe comes from Amelia Simmons's American   cookery cookbook from 1796 and this recipe is not  easy just like when I did a couple of episodes ago   which was very confusing this recipe is going  to take some interpretation and it's got an   interesting title one that I when I did digging  I could find no other recipes with this title "a   stew pie" a stew pie is this like stew like a pie  is this a pie is this a stew I good question good   question it starts off by boiling a shoulder of  veal now we're not going to be using veal today   because uh in the time period they would use a  veal a lot because it was the only tender beef   kind of product our beef is very tender there's  no reason to use veal in this circumstance   luckily though it does say boil a shoulder a  veal so it's actually giving us an amount we   have our our shoulder of veal we salt and pepper  it and we put some butter in there and then it   has slices of raw salt pork notice they bothered  to tell us you don't need to cook this salt pork   ahead of time you already cooked the veal we're  going to be using raw salt pork and in this we're   making a layer of meat a layer of biscuit a  layer of meat again we're covering the pot up   close and we are stewing it half an hour or so  in three quarts of water so even in this recipe   we don't even know what this is she doesn't  tell us exactly what she means by the cooking   method here and what it should look like when  it's done so our first step in this recipe is   to get our beef boiling I'm gonna do that right  now she implies boiling it whole in this case and   with this piece of beef I'm going to cut it up  and boil it it'll boil a little faster that way Let me read this recipe in full so we can  interpret it a little bit more "a stew pie   boil a shoulder of veal and cut up salt and pepper  and butter half a pound and slices of raw salt   pork make a layer of meat and a layer of biscuit  or biscuit dough into the pot cover close stew   half an hour in three quarts of water" the recipe  right after this is a sea pie now if you go back   on our Channel you'll find a sea pie recipe and  it has layers of meat and biscuit in it but it's   done completely differently this sea pie you like  build up in a in a pan and you seal it and then   you boil the whole pan this I don't think is that  at all I think this is like we would think of as   stew that has biscuit dough in it that's all that  it is um and we have the the quantity of veal we   have quantity of butter it doesn't say how much  salt pork we need it doesn't say how much biscuit   we need and then it does say how much water it  gets put in the pan so that it doesn't turn out   too much like soup but turns out more like a stew  while our meat is boiling we need to work on sort   of another component here and that is the biscuit  dough it either calls for already cooked biscuit   which I'm not sure exactly what it would be like  or biscuit dough and we do have a biscuit recipe   in here which again is kind of rare this is the  first American cookbook and biscuits don't show up   like this in other cookery so it gives us an idea  of biscuits the biscuit recipe is pretty simple   um a pound of flour one ounce of butter one  egg wet with milk break while oven is heating   and in the same proportion oh yeah what a man  what okay let me try this again we have flour   we have butter we have an egg and we have milk  okay that seems like a very simple uh dough and   it doesn't have any leavening break which actually  means knead it so you need this while your oven is   getting up to heat and in the 18th century you're  heating with a brick oven that takes maybe hours   to heat up instead of you know today's ovens you  just set a knob nope not anything like that so   you're kneading this and then I'm not sure what  this whole second section is or this last little   phrase and in the same proportion so I'm not going  to worry about or we're not going to worry about   that part but we and we just need to make the  dough anyway so let's make some dough with flour   butter egg and a little milk and the ratio it's  a lot of flour and just a little bit of butter this recipe has eggs this is the  first time we have used eggs from   the chickens on the homestead  these are homestead eggs ready   to use in the recipe we're going  to use one of these in our biscuit We've got our dough that's all put together I  rolled it out nice and thin so that I can use   it to assemble our stew pie we're going to set  this aside of course I've got the meat it's been   boiled and I've separated it out the water and  the meat again to help us assemble it this the   salt pork is something a little special in this  and it's going to give us the pop or the bite in   this particular recipe now the salt pork coming  out of your salt pork container of course is all   covered with salt and it's it's way too salty  we want some of that salt flavor that's exactly   what we're looking for in this dish but we can't  have all of that salt flavor so we're going to   take our salt pork and soak it overnight or I've  started soaking this these two pieces here early   this morning so it'll have time to get the very  very surface salt off or else it's just a little   too strong now you're probably saying I don't  have salt pork just you know in the cellar like   everyone in the 18th century did you can make your  own salt pork you know you you buy the pork cut   and you salt it for just a couple of days and  you'll get the salt pork effect and again this   is salt pork like they would have had in the 18th  century you can sometimes find a salt pork in the   grocery store today it's not exactly the same  thing at all so make sure to go back and check   out our salt pork episode you can see us making  salt pork and you know kind of what it's like assembling our stew pie so we've got some beef  pieces in here and I'm just going to toss in beef   pieces we want to kind of fill in the bottom  layer we're gonna put in beef pieces and then   some salt pork and about half should probably  want to put in because we're just going to have   two layers here spread it evenly because we want  these flavors to all kind of spread out properly   we're going to put in a few pieces of butter  now with our meat and we're gonna pepper this   all right it calls for salt and pepper generally  there's enough salt that comes in with the salt   pork that we don't need to add that but a nice  generous helping a black pepper sprinkled on top   now we have some of our biscuit dough and I've  made this into kind of thin pieces I've cut so   they're like noodles so about half of it  I made into a big sheet the half of it is   in these thinner pieces so this in between  layer we're going to use these little chunks   we make them little chunks because if we put  in a big sheet here it makes it hard to eat   and while the top we don't mind kind of peeling  that away the middle stuff we want to be able to   eat the individual pieces without sawing them  into bits now our next layer put in the beef   pieces again on top of the pieces we just put in  and now I'm just going to do all the rest of it   because this is just two layers if our if our  pot was smaller around then we might do three   or four layers now the rest of our salt pork that  we've cut up the last of our butter here a couple   more chunks you know it's going to be good with  this much butter in it right there we go butter   a little bit more pepper on the very top of this   it does call for stewing this in the water  that's why I saved back what I boiled the beef   in I didn't want to lose any of those flavors she  doesn't call for this step specifically but I've   got almost the perfect ratio here this is about  a one-third recipe she calls for three quarts   we've got one quart of this beef broth that we're  gonna pour in at this point and then our last step as the directions call for it gets a tight  lid on it we want to hold all those juices   in we don't want it boiling out and uh this  just gets cooked as she calls it a half hour   so it stews so on a low low boil for a half  hour you could probably even since we've got   raw pork in there raw salt pork maybe  40 minutes let's get this on the fire our stew pie is done and it turned out  like I expected although it's a really   hard it's got salt pork and it's got beef  in here but you can't tell the difference   at least by looking at it right question is what  did the individual pieces of meat taste like so   we've got our our wonderful stew broth here really  really really good a nice level of saltiness   um you know with that with that soap work  in here I did not need to add any salt   great beef flavor our biscuit dough turns  out like giant noodles like I expected it to   let me see if I can find something  I know is salt pork where are you   it's very tricky here it's  probably a smaller cut up piece slightly different texture the two kinds of meats melt together and give  you um really the best of both worlds on that so very very good this is do like they would have connected  stew in in the late 18th century   and wow it's really good what a great recipe  that uses salt pork just like they would have   had in the 18th century and so much better  than I expected I mean you know Stu but this   turned out great so I want to try this one  again great recipe for when it's cold outside   like right now you want to warm up you want  something to you know give you energy great   recipe thanks for joining us today as we Savor  the Flavors in the Aromas of the 18th century

Channel: Townsends

Views: 468,233

Keywords: townsends, jas townsend and son, reenacting, history, 18th century, 19th century, jon townsend, 18th century cooking

Id: Z9kGSeBefvM

Length: 15min 11sec (911 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2023