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Leg of Pork Stuffed
Make deep incisions in the meat; boil some potatoes done, mash fine, and add an onion chopped, little sage, pinch of cayenne, and salt. Mix with this a piece of butter and fill the incisions; pull the skin down and skewer over to keep the dressing from falling out. Roast slowly; when the meat is done pour the gravy in a pan, take off the fat, add a little browned flour; as soon as it boils up once, remove from the fire. Serve with cranberry sauce.
A fresh (uncured) leg of pork, pocketed and packed with a sage-and-potato stuffing. The original assumes a cook who knows pork by look and smell rather than by thermometer, which is the one thing worth fixing.
- Internal temperatureCook to 145F at the thickest part away from the bone, then rest 15-20 minutes; some cooks prefer to take a bone-in leg further, to 160-165F, for a softer texture near the shank. Much older practice cooked pork far harder than this, which dries the meat badly and is not needed.
- "Roast slowly"A modern equivalent is around 325F. A whole fresh leg of 8-12 lb wants roughly 20-25 minutes per pound at that heat, so plan on about 2 3/4 to 5 hours.
- The incisionsCut deep pockets with a narrow boning knife rather than slashing across the surface, and stuff them while the potato mixture is still warm and pliable. Overfilled pockets push open as the meat contracts, which is why the recipe insists on skewering the skin down over them.
- Crackling versus stuffingPulling the skin down over the pockets protects the filling but works against crisp skin. Score the remaining skin, salt it dry, and give the roast 20 minutes at 450F at the start or the end if crackling matters to you.
- Browned flourFlour toasted dry in a pan until nut-coloured, kept in a jar. It thickens less than raw flour, so allow about half again as much by volume, and note that the recipe wants it boiled only once.
- Stuffing proportionsNone are given. For an 8-10 lb leg, about 2 lb potatoes, one medium onion, a tablespoon of chopped sage, 3-4 tablespoons butter and salt to taste fills the pockets with a little left over to bake alongside.
- YieldA leg of this size serves 10-14, with leftovers.
- Cranberry with porkNot an error for apple. Sharp fruit was commonly served with fresh pork, and cranberries were widely available in season in this period.
Stuffing a fresh leg of pork through cut pockets rather than boning and rolling it is an economical technique: it seasons the interior of a thick, lean joint without the butchery skill a rolled roast requires. Sage with pork is old enough in English and American cookery to be treated as a given by writers of this period, paired without comment in the meat chapters of the era. The recipe's brevity is characteristic of compilations of this kind. Fresh pork also had a season: before reliable refrigeration, hogs were killed in cold weather, which is part of why an unsalted leg turns up alongside cranberries, a late-autumn fruit.