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Pork Steaks to Broil
Cut the steaks from the chine about half an inch thick; trim off the thick part of the bone; salt the steaks and broil over a moderate fire, having them to brown on both sides. When done, season with butter and pepper, and serve hot.
A bare four-line instruction that assumes a live coal fire and a butcher at your elbow. The translation work is mostly in the cut and in what "done" now means.
- "The chine"The chine is the backbone end of the loin. Steaks cut from it are what a modern counter sells as bone-in pork loin chops or blade chops. Ask for them cut a full half inch, or buy thicker and accept longer cooking.
- Trimming the bone"Trim off the thick part of the bone" most likely refers to cutting back the projecting vertebral knob so the steak lies flat on the grid. A butcher will do it; at home, leave it and simply press the chop down as it cooks.
- A moderate fireOn charcoal, coals covered with grey ash and a hand held at grid height tolerable for four or five seconds. Under a gas broiler, the second rack position rather than the top, so the surface browns while the interior catches up.
- DonenessPork was customarily taken to grey-white throughout in this period. Current practice is 145F at the centre with a three-minute rest, which leaves a faint blush and a far juicier chop. A half-inch steak reaches that in roughly three to four minutes a side.
- SaltingSalt the steaks at least 20 minutes ahead if you have the time; it draws moisture that then reabsorbs and seasons the meat through. Salting at the moment of cooking, as written, only seasons the crust.
- The butter finishButter goes on after the meat leaves the fire, not before. Added earlier it burns and the milk solids blacken. A knob melted over the hot steak, with pepper, is all the recipe asks for.
- YieldOne steak per person; two if they are thin blade chops. Serve immediately, since half-inch pork loses its heat quickly on a cold plate.
Books of this period place pork steaks alongside beefsteak and mutton chops as the plain, quick meats of the everyday table, as distinct from the salted and smoked cuts laid up for winter. The insistence on cooking pork thoroughly, which shaped American pork cookery for a century and more, is often connected to trichinosis, though the practice predates the parasite's description in the 1830s and the establishment of its link to human disease in the 1860s; fear of it long outlasted the change in hog husbandry that made it rare. The finishing knob of butter with pepper is a familiar Anglo-American gesture for broiled meat, a substitute for the compound butters and maitre d'hotel sauces of the professional kitchen.