Roast Pork
A small loin of pork, three table-spoons bread-crumbs, one onion, half a tea-spoon chopped sage, half tea-spoon salt, half tea-spoon pepper, one ounce chopped suet, one table-spoon drippings. Separate each joint of the loin with the chopper, and then make an incision with a knife into the thick part of the pork in which to put the stuffing. Prepare the stuffing by mixing the bread-crumbs together with the onion, which must have previously been finely chopped. Add to this the sage, pepper, salt and suet, and when all is thoroughly mixed, press the mixture snugly into the incision already made in the pork, and sew together the edges of the meat with needle and thread, to confine the stuffing. Grease well a sheet of kitchen paper, with drippings, place the loin into this, securing it with a wrapping of twine. Put to bake in a dry baking-pan, in a brisk oven, basting immediately and constantly as the grease draws out, and roast a length of time, allowing twenty minutes to the pound and twenty minutes longer. Serve with apple-sauce or apple-- fritters.-Miss M. L. Dods.
A stuffed pork loin roasted in greased paper — an early form of what we would now do with parchment or foil. Two things need translating: the oven and the roasting time.
- The hinge: cook to temperature, not to the clockTwenty minutes to the pound plus twenty minutes takes a modern loin well past dry. Roast to an internal temperature of 145F at the thickest part, away from the stuffing, then rest 10 minutes; a stuffed loin needs the stuffing itself to reach 165F, which is the real limiting factor.
- "Brisk oven"Roughly 400-425F. In practice, start hot for 15-20 minutes to set the surface, then drop to 350F for the remainder, or the outside will be leathery before the centre is done.
- Kitchen paperNot paper towel. This is plain kitchen or butcher's paper, greased and tied round the joint to shield it. Parchment does the same job; foil works but traps steam and softens the crust.
- "Separate each joint of the loin"The loin here came bone-in, and the chopper was going through the rib or chine bones so the roast would carve. Ask the butcher to chine the loin; a boneless supermarket loin needs none of this, only a pocket cut for the stuffing.
- SuetOne ounce of chopped beef suet, about 2 tablespoons. Available from butchers, or substitute cold grated butter or lard — its only job is to keep the crumbs from packing dry.
- Bread-crumbsFresh crumbs from stale bread, not dried packaged ones, which will absorb too much and set hard. Three tablespoons is a modest amount; for a 3-4 lb loin you may want to double the whole stuffing.
- DrippingsRendered fat saved from previous roasts, usually beef or pork. Lard, bacon fat or a neutral oil all serve.
- Basting and modern pork"Basting immediately and constantly" reflects a fattier animal that gave up plenty of grease. Today's lean loin yields little; brush with fat every 20 minutes or lay bacon over the top instead.
- YieldA "small loin" of about 3 lb serves six; the recipe offers apple-sauce or apple fritters alongside.
Sage, onion and breadcrumbs is often said to be the oldest and most durable English pork stuffing, and the pairing of roast pork with apple sauce is traditionally reckoned to be long established — the sharp fruit cutting fat that a nineteenth-century hog carried in far greater quantity than a modern one. The attribution to "Miss M. L. Dods" points to the British cookery-book writing that American compilers borrowed from freely; the name Dods was strongly associated with Scottish cookery in that era. Note also the greased-paper wrapping, a technique that predates foil by decades and shows how cooks managed an open coal-range oven with uneven, fierce heat: the paper took the scorching so the meat did not.