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Roast Shoulder of Pork
Have meat cut from "little pig." Wipe and follow directions for roasting Loin of Pork. (See Page 173.)
A cross-reference entry rather than a full recipe: the whole method lives on the page for loin of pork. What matters here is the cut, and the fact that a shoulder does not behave like a loin in the oven.
- "Little pig"Apparently meat from a young, small hog. The book does not define the term, and it is not clear whether a suckling pig is excluded. A rough modern equivalent would be a fresh (uncured) bone-in pork shoulder of about 4-6 lb.
- Shoulder is not loinLoin is lean and finishes at 145F with a rest; shoulder is worked muscle laced with collagen, and generally wants to be taken well past that, towards 180-205F, before it is fully tender. Taken off at loin temperature it will be firm rather than juicy.
- Oven heatThe book gives no temperature here, and the loin directions it refers to are not reproduced. As a modern approach only: a hot start of around 450F for 20-30 minutes, then 325F for the remainder, allowing roughly 35-40 minutes per pound for a shoulder.
- "Wipe"Pre-refrigeration instruction for cleaning the surface with a damp cloth. Patting dry with paper towel does the same job and dries the skin, which matters if you want crackling.
- The skinIf the shoulder comes skin-on, score it through the fat in narrow parallel cuts and rub with salt. Skin left unscored steams under its own fat and goes leathery.
- Doneness by temperature, not colourOlder books judged pork done when the juices ran clear and often took it well past that out of fear of trichinosis. Use a thermometer; a shoulder at 200F will still show pink near the bone and is perfectly cooked.
- Resting and yieldRest 20 minutes under loose foil before carving. A 5 lb bone-in shoulder serves six to eight with the usual Sunday accompaniments.
- The panShoulder throws a great deal of fat. Roast on a rack over a deep pan and pour off drippings partway through, or the gravy will be unusable and the drippings may smoke.
Elizabeth O. Hiller's 52 Sunday Dinners (1913) is built around a year of full menus, and the terse cross-reference here is typical of how such books economised: the roasting method was set down once, under loin, and other cuts could simply point back to it. Hog-killing was traditionally winter work, done once the weather turned cold enough to handle and keep the meat, so fresh pork was a seasonal luxury in the months when most of the animal was going into brine, smoke or sausage. Shoulder was the thrifty roast, in a young animal tender enough to carry a Sunday table. The insistence on meat from a "little pig" suggests a market in which the age and size of the animal still mattered, distinctions largely flattened by modern commercial hog production.