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PORK CHEESE (a I'Italienne)
Take three pounds of fresh pork, one pound and three-quarters fat and one pound and a quarter lean. Chop it rather coarsely, and mix with it a savoury powder made of three tea-spoonfuls of salt, three salt-spoonfuls of pepper, a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, a salt-spoonful of chopped sage, a salt-spoonful of powdered thyme, a tea-spoonful of mushroom-powder, and a grated nutmeg. Press the meat into a shallow baking-tin, and bake in a slow oven. Let the cheese get cold, and when serving cut it into slices like brawn. Send vinegar and mustard to table with it.
A pressed, baked pork loaf meant to be eaten cold and sliced. The method is sound; what the original leaves out is time, temperature and any indication of when it is done.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt-spoon is roughly a quarter teaspoon. So the seasoning is about 3 tsp salt, 3/4 tsp pepper, 1 tsp parsley, 1/4 tsp each sage and thyme, 1 tsp mushroom powder.
- Slow oven300F/150C. At that heat a 3 lb block in a shallow tin will take roughly two hours, but go by temperature, not the clock.
- The hinge: cook it throughCoarsely chopped fresh pork must reach 160F/71C at the centre. This is the one thing the recipe does not tell you and the one thing that matters, since the loaf is then served cold with no further cooking.
- Fat-to-lean ratioNearly 60 per cent fat sounds extreme but it is what makes the cold loaf sliceable — there is no stock or gelatin here, only rendered fat setting around the meat. Shoulder alone will not do it; ask a butcher for back fat or belly to make up the difference.
- Chopped, not minced"Rather coarsely" is deliberate. Hand-chop or use the coarse plate of a grinder; a food processor turns it to paste and the sliced cheese loses its mottled texture.
- Mushroom powderA store-cupboard item in Victorian cookery, made by drying and grinding mushrooms. Dried porcini or shiitake ground in a spice mill will stand in, though the flavour will not be identical.
- A whole grated nutmegThat is around 2 to 3 teaspoons of ground nutmeg for 3 lb of meat, which is assertive by modern taste. Half a nutmeg may suit better.
- Pressing and coolingCover the tin with foil while baking so the top does not dry out, then weight the loaf lightly as it cools so the fat sets into a firm block. Chill overnight before slicing.
- Keeping and yieldThere is no cure or nitrite in this, so it is a cooked meat and nothing more — refrigerate and eat within three or four days. Three pounds gives eight to ten servings as a cold cut.
"Pork cheese" is an English name for a pressed pork loaf, cousin to brawn and to the head cheese of the American table, though it uses ordinary fresh pork rather than the head and trotters — hence the instruction to cut it "into slices like brawn" and to send vinegar and mustard with it, the standard sharp accompaniments to any cold pressed meat. Nothing about the dish is Italian in origin. Its place in a dictionary of cookery is practical: a cold larder dish that could be baked once, kept for several days in a cool pantry, and cut for breakfast, supper or a picnic without further work — the sort of standing provision that mattered a great deal in a household without refrigeration.