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Pork Tenderloin Lyonnaise
Wipe and split two large pork tenderloins in halves lengthwise; sprinkle with salt, pepper and dredge with flour. Melt two tablespoons each of Cottolene and butter in an iron frying pan, and brown tenderloin richly on both sides in the hot fat. Remove to wellgreased dripping pan and add to fat three onions thinly sliced; cook until delicately browned, stirring often. Sprinkle over onions two tablespoons flour, stir well. Put two tablespoons vinegar into onehalf cup hot water, add slowly to onions, mix thoroughly. Lay tenderloins over onions, cover closely and cook in the oven until meat is tender. Dispose tenderloin on hot serving platter and pour over contents of frying pan. Vinegar may be omitted and more water added.
A straightforward braise, but the original assumes a shortening that no longer exists and gives no oven temperature at all. The other thing worth knowing is that pork tenderloin in 1913 was a fattier cut than what you will buy today.
- CottoleneA cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company, which sponsored this book. Use lard, or an equal amount of a neutral oil, alongside the butter.
- Oven heatNone is given. A covered braise of this kind wants a moderate oven, around 325-350F; start checking early, as split tenderloins cook quickly.
- Do not cook it to tenderThe instruction to cook "until meat is tender" belongs to older, fattier pork. Modern tenderloin is very lean and dries out past 145F at the centre; check with a thermometer rather than by feel.
- Splitting the tenderloins"Split in halves lengthwise" gives two long pieces from each loin, four thin pieces in all, which brown quickly and cook through fast. Pound them lightly to even thickness.
- The pan confusionThe tenderloins go to a greased dripping pan while the onions cook, then the recipe lays them back over the onions. Either return everything to the frying pan if it is ovenproof, or scrape the onion gravy into the dripping pan and cover tightly with a lid or foil.
- Dredge, then brown dryFlour the meat just before it hits the fat. Flour left sitting on salted pork draws out moisture and turns to paste, and you lose the crust that carries the flavour into the gravy.
- The vinegarTwo tablespoons of vinegar in half a cup of water is a sharp sauce by current taste; cider vinegar suits pork better than a harsh white. The original's note that it may be omitted is sound if you want a plain onion gravy.
- YieldTwo tenderloins serve four to six. The pan gravy is poured over the meat on the platter rather than served separately.
52 Sunday Dinners (1913) was a promotional cookbook issued to advertise Cottolene, a cottonseed-oil shortening marketed as a cleaner and cheaper substitute for lard, which explains why the fat is named as a brand in almost every recipe in the book. "Lyonnaise" in French cooking simply signals onions, after Lyon and the surrounding onion-growing country, and by the late nineteenth century it had become a standard American menu word for anything cooked with sliced browned onion, potatoes most famously of all. The vinegar-and-water deglaze here is the older, plainer sort of gravy that predates commercial stock and bouillon cubes in home kitchens: fat, flour, onion and something acid, built in the pan the meat browned in.