Burgoo's thickness and a salt-pork cooking experiment

Alex Clarke's family test for burgoo is that a spoon must stand upright in it without slipping, a rule taught by his grandfather. The dish combines slowly cooked meat and vegetables with a thickener, traditionally ship's biscuit in Royal Navy practice. For a university naval-history potluck, he made a salt-pork version and found that biscuit produced the required thickness more successfully than other thickeners. He recalls both some of his favourite burgoos and disappointingly thin versions in Kentucky.