As Memorial Day approaches, kicking off the official start of summer, customers always ask how certain cuts or sub-primals ended up with certain names. Most of these questions specifically relate to pork because the actual names do not line up with anatomical features of the hog. But, as I usually say to my customers, nothing is complicated in the meat industry since most terminology is quite literal and relates to something in our shared past.

Pork butts prompt the greatest number of queries, and most people assume that it comes from the rear of the animal. In Colonial North America, Boston served as the center of pork production in the American colonies and exported a considerable amount of protein out of Boston harbor. Since pork shoulders were not considered as desirable as other portions of the animal, such as the loin and the ham, the shoulders were salted, brined, and stored in containers called “butts.” Hence the name, Boston butt.

Contrary to popular St. Louis, Mo., legend, Boston butchers may have also created the pork steak or pork shoulder blade steak in America. It might have been imported from England as some early cookbooks such as The Woman’s Guide to Virtue, Economy, and Happiness (1825) provided a recipe utilizing a “pork steak” from the neck of the hog. The recipe called for it to be seared and then stewed. Throughout the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, pork blade steaks also popped up in various advertisements and restaurant menus.

While the pork steak might have originated in Boston, it was St. Louis that made it popular. The pork steak is often attributed to Winfred E. Steinbruegge, a St. Louis suburban resident, who asked his local butcher at Tom Boy to cut up a pork butt into steaks in 1956. Schnucks Markets, a family-owned and operated regional grocery chain in the Midwest, also credits the second generation of the family as the creators of the pork steak sometime in the 1950s. Whoever invented the cut, St. Louis pork steaks are typically seared over a charcoal fire or broiler and then simmered in BBQ sauce or gravy, much like the recipe published in 1825. Still, pork steaks are hyper-regional to the St. Louis market. If you mention pork steaks to people who reside north of I-72 in Illinois or in Indiana, they have never heard of a St. Louis pork steak.

The other muscle from the shoulder, the pork picnic, is also confounding. Proving the etymology of the cut also proves to be more difficult. From popular magazines published in the late-nineteenth century, the pork picnic provided a smaller alternative to a ham that was budget-friendly. In July 1897, J.L. Hudson’s butcher shop advertised a pork picnic ham in The Michigan Christian Advocate for 7 cents per pound, which was 15 cents per pound cheaper than a cured and boiled ham. In fact, the boiled ham was the most expensive item in the advertisement. The smaller size of the picnic also allowed people to make economical meals at home, and most importantly, when they enjoyed a picnic in a public park. It is believed that the name “picnic ham” or “pork picnic” derives from the fabled outdoor picnic. This certainly would make sense since the terminology pork picnic coincided with the establishment of parks in late-nineteenth century urban America. The bottom of the pork shoulder therefore became known as the picnic and was formalized in the USDA’s Institutional Meat Purchase Specifications.

As you decide on your Memorial Day center-of-the plate item to celebrate the end of the school year or the opening of your neighborhood or backyard pool, I encourage you to smoke a Boston butt, grill a St. Louis pork steak, or make a ham sandwich from a cured pork picnic. All are hard to ruin since they derive from the shoulder, but if you do, at least you can provide a little history to your guests.

The Many Names and Uses of the Pork Shoulder

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