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PORK (a la Blanquette)
Make half a pint of bread (or rice) sauce for each pound of meat to be used. Cut the pork into neat slices and trim off all fat; the best part for this dish is the kidney end of a loin that has been stuffed with a mild sage and onion stuffing. Let it heat through in the sauce, and, if there is no stuffing in the meat, season it with sage or thyme and parsley. When hot through, beat in the yolk of a raw egg for half a pint of sauce, with a morsel of made mustard and chutney. Serve hot, with a border of potato chips. Probable cost, 1s. 3d. to 1s. 6d.
This is a made dish for cold roast pork, not a way of cooking raw meat: the pork is already cooked, and the sauce does the rest. Read it as a leftovers recipe from a household that roasted a whole loin.
- The hinge: no boiling after the yolkOnce the egg yolk goes in, keep the pan below a simmer and stir until the sauce just thickens. A boil scrambles the yolk and the sauce breaks into grains.
- Half a pintAn imperial half-pint is 10 fl oz, about 1¼ US cups, per pound of meat. That is a generous amount of sauce; the meat should be swimming, not glazed.
- Bread sauceMilk infused with onion, a clove or two and a blade of mace, then thickened with fresh white breadcrumbs and finished with butter. Rice sauce is the same idea with rice simmered soft in the milk and sieved. A modern béchamel will stand in but gives a smoother, less homely result.
- Meat temperatureThe pork is cooked already; it only needs to heat through. Slice it thin, add it to the warm sauce, and give it five to eight minutes over low heat. Longer and it turns dry and stringy inside the sauce.
- Made mustard"Made" means prepared and wet, as opposed to dry mustard powder — English mustard from a jar is the direct equivalent. A "morsel" is about a quarter teaspoon for half a pint, with roughly the same of chutney; both are seasonings here, not flavour bases.
- Potato chipsBritish usage of the period, and in this context closer to what is now sold as game chips or crisps: thin rounds of potato fried until crisp and arranged round the rim of the dish. Modern chips (fries) work too but will go limp against the sauce.
- If there is no stuffingSeason with a pinch of dried sage or thyme and a good handful of chopped parsley. Sage with pork is the fixed pairing behind the whole recipe.
- Yield and costYield -- A pound of cooked pork with its sauce serves three, or four with the potatoes.
Blanquette in French cookery means a white stew — veal, lamb or chicken simmered without browning and finished with egg yolk and cream, the name taken simply from blanc, white. Here the French label sits over a much humbler operation: cold roast pork reheated in bread sauce, with mustard and chutney for lift. Bread sauce was a standing English preparation, made in quantity for roast poultry and game. The chutney points to the same period's appetite for Anglo-Indian relishes, by then a staple of the British larder.