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Fried Pork Tenderloins
Split the tenderloins. Rub well with salt and pepper, fry in lard a nice brown, and serve hot.
Three lines and no quantities, which is typical of turn-of-the-century meat cookery: the cook was assumed to know what a browned tenderloin looks like. The main adjustment is doneness.
- What "tenderloin" meantThe tenderloin is the small inner muscle, and on the smaller farm-butchered hogs of the period it would have been correspondingly smaller than a supermarket tenderloin today. The recipe gives no quantities, so the number served is a matter of guesswork; the plural "tenderloins" suggests more than one.
- "Split the tenderloins"Most likely simply cut lengthwise so the muscle lies flatter in the pan. If you butterfly it without cutting through and open it flat, pounding to an even thickness helps, since the tapered ends otherwise overcook before the thick middle is done — but the pounding is an addition, not something the original asks for.
- LardRendered pork lard is still the right fat for this and gives a cleaner brown than butter, which scorches. Any neutral high-smoke-point fat works. The recipe does not say how much; enough to keep the meat from sticking and browning unevenly is the practical minimum.
- DonenessCook to 145F at the center and rest three minutes. Period cookery generally took pork well past that point, and fear of trichinosis was one reason given at the time; commercial pork today does not require it, and tenderloin is lean enough that overcooking ruins it.
- Pan heatMedium-high, hot enough that the meat sizzles on contact. Flattened tenderloin needs roughly three to four minutes a side — the "nice brown" and the finished center should arrive at about the same moment.
- SeasoningSalt and pepper generously and do it at least fifteen minutes ahead if you have the time, so the salt penetrates rather than sitting on the crust.
- ServingThe original serves the meat plain. Deglazing the pan with a splash of cider or stock and pouring it over is an easy addition that keeps the lean meat from eating dry, though the recipe itself calls for nothing of the kind.
Pork tenderloin fried in lard is a plain-cooking dish associated with the American Midwest, where cold-weather hog butchering produced a small quantity of this delicate cut, often eaten fresh rather than cured with the rest of the animal. The flattened, breaded pork tenderloin sandwich of Indiana and Iowa is usually traced to early twentieth-century lunch counters; whether a plain fried version like this one is its direct ancestor is not established. Brevity of this kind is common in the meat chapters of household cookbooks, which tend to spend their words on unfamiliar or expensive dishes.