Lee Rudolph > wrote:
>Jim Elbrecht > writes:
>
>>I'm not satisfied with the wikipedia entry on why it is called Boston
>>Butt.
>>
>>"In pre-revolutionary New England and into the Revolutionary War, some
>>pork cuts (not those highly valued, or "high on the hog," like loin
>>and ham) were packed into casks or barrels (also known as "butts") for
>>storage and shipment. The way the hog shoulder was cut in the Boston
>>area became known in other regions as "Boston Butt."
>>
>>Can anyone give me some references other than a website that refers to
>>"How to Cook Meat" by Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby. [anyone
>>familiar with them?]
>
>Chris Schlesinger is a Massachusetts restaurateur, with at least
>one restaurant in Boston, and one in my town; the latter,
Thanks-- that gives it at least a grain of possibility. Worth looking
for the book at least.
-snip-
>>I've found the exact verbiage on a gazillion other sites -- some
>>referring to the National Pork Board- which is no longer there.
>
>Have you tried the Internet Archive, http://wayback.archive.org ?
>If you have an actual URL for the purported NPB page in question,
>it's very likely you can find it in the archive.
No specific url- and the one that goes to the home page redirects.
Searching that site [with Google] got no hits for "revolutionary".
>
>>I
>>don't know who plagiarized who, but I find the explanation
>>implausible.
>>
>>It seems odd to me that a cut that is more popular in the south
>>[though I grew up on it in rural NY] is named [without some irony
>>being involved] for a New England city.
>
>Why? Consider "Boston cooler", "California cheeseburger", etc.,
>and maybe "New York sirloin" (a common descriptive for a cut of
>meat in New England...do New Yorkers, rural or urban, use the
>term?); no irony in any of them, that I know of.
I had never heard of a Boston cooler or a California Cheeseburger.
Here's a theory on the Boston Cooler. Those MI folks were lonely for
home and the smart entrepreneurs capitalized on it. They built a
second Coney Island out there for cryin-out-loud! [And copied the
Coney Island hotdog--- which in turn found its way to Northern NY as a
"Michigan" 50 years later.- BTW, that is just my theory, having
enjoyed Coney hot dogs in the 50s and being introduced to Michigans in
the 90's.]
Googling 'California Cheeseburger' was a mistake. <g> Not sure which
one you mean--
I'm from NY & I *have* heard of a NY Sirloin. Probably as popular
here as anywhere. I see wiki-p says it is the same as a Kansas
City steak-- which I didn't know. *That* all makes sense to me.
>
>>I'm also suspect of the common use of the term 'butt' for a cask in
>>Revolutionary America.
>
>The Oxford English dictionary has a definition for _butt_ (second
>noun of that spelling, def. 1c) as (now obsolete) "A cask for fish,
>fruit, etc., of a capacity varying according to the contents and
>locality", including citations
>
> 1649 F. Thorpe Charge York Assizes 28 In a Butt of Salmon
> four~score and four gallons.
> 1728 E. Chambers Cycl. (at cited word), A Butt of Currants,
> is from fifteen to twenty two hundred Weight.
> 1753 W. Maitland Hist. Edinb. v. 327 For ilk Bale of Madder
> or Butt of Prunes, 1/-.
>
>(nothing from the colonies--but it *is* the O*E*D). It also has
>a definition for _butt_ (third noun of that spelling, 3):
>
> 3. A buttock. Chiefly dial. and colloq. in U.S.
>...
> c1450 Bk. Cookery in Holkham Coll. (1882) 58 Tak Buttes
> of pork and smyt them to peces.
> 1486 Bk. St. Albans A v, The marow of hogges that is
> in the bone of the butte of porke.
>...
> 1884 Harper's Mag. July 299/1 Rump butts, strips, rounds,
> and canning beef.
Which end of the pig are those butts coming from? I would expect a
butt to be from the hindquarters of a critter-- thus 'buttocks' and
'rump butts'. Any diagrams showing the butt coming from a
shoulder?
But the 1884 reference gives me an idea. I'll see what I can find on
the Making of America pages.
Now I'm really getting suspicious. No hits on Boston Butt at
Cornell's MOA site. A search for pork and butt on the same page
locked things up- so I went to umich.
No hits on Boston butt-- nothing for pork and butt on the same page.
Neither site has all there was to print from 1800 to 1835-- but they
have a vast amount of journals and books from that period-- especially
from 1850-1900 [at least that was the main focus when I spent a lot of
time there years ago.]
Google has some old books too-- but the earliest reference to Boston
Butt was in the 1904 "Proceedings of the annual meeting By
Pennsylvania Dairy Union"
Interesting that he suggests cutting it up for chops-- and that he
calls the whole top of the shoulder a butt. The top 1/3 he calls a
'shoulder butt'.
-snip-
>>
>>Any other theories on why it is 'Boston Butt'? [or sources that prove
>>Wikipedia is right?]
>
>I could tell you, butt then...oh, never mind.
Don't make me the butt of your jokes. . . <g>
Jim