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PORK, CHINE OF (another way)
Make a savoury powder with a dessert-spoonful of finely-chopped sage, half a tea-spoonful of thyme, half a tea-spoonful of parsley, a small tea-spoonful of salt, and half a tea-spoonful of pepper. Score the chine lengthwise, and slip the powder under the skin. Roast according to the directions given above. If liked, the powder can be omitted, and a sauce, made as follows, sent to table with the chine. Slice two large onions, and fry them in a little good dripping until they are lightly browned without being burnt. Drain them, and put them into a clean saucepan with half a pint of brown sauce, two table-spoonfuls of chopped mushrooms, or a tea-spoonful of mushroom-powder, or a dessert-spoonful of mushroom ketchup, two table-spoonfuls of vinegar, and one tea-spoonful of mixed mustard. Let the sauce boil, and serve. Time to roast, twenty minutes per pound. Probable cost, 9 1/2d. to 10 1/2d. per pound.
A chine is the backbone section of the pig, cut with the loin meat attached — a butcher's cut you will now have to request by name. The rest is a straightforward herb-rubbed roast with a sharp onion gravy alongside.
- The cutAsk a butcher for a bone-in loin roast with the chine bone left in, or accept a plain bone-in loin. Salted chine was once a distinct regional product in England, notably in Lincolnshire; what you will get today is fresh pork.
- Get the herbs under the skin, not on itThe hinge of the dish is slipping the savoury powder beneath the skin along the scored lines, so it perfumes the fat as it renders. Rubbed on the outside it is more likely to scorch.
- Herb quantitiesA dessert-spoon is about two teaspoons. The sage is specified as finely chopped, so fresh; the recipe does not say whether the thyme and parsley are fresh or dried. If you read them as dried and prefer fresh, roughly treble them.
- Roasting time and temperature"According to the directions given above" refers to instructions not reproduced on this page, so follow your usual method for a bone-in pork loin. Twenty minutes per pound is a fair guide, but cook to an internal 145F at the thickest point away from bone and rest 15 minutes.
- Brown sauceThis means the kitchen's own espagnole — a roux browned with mirepoix and moistened with brown stock — not bottled sauce. Half an imperial pint is 10 fl oz, so use about 1 1/4 cups of a good reduced brown stock or veal gravy.
- Mushroom powder and ketchupMushroom powder is dried mushrooms ground fine, easily made in a spice grinder. Mushroom ketchup is a thin, dark, salty extract still sold in Britain; a teaspoon of soy plus a little anchovy is the nearest substitute if you cannot find it.
- DrippingBeef or pork dripping gives the onions the right flavour. Any neutral fat works, but brown the onions slowly and drain them well or the sauce turns greasy.
- YieldA 4 lb bone-in chine will serve roughly four to six. The sauce as given makes enough for that many; it is meant to be poured sparingly, being sharp with vinegar and mustard.
The chine — from Old French eschine, the spine — is priced here at 9 1/2d. to 10 1/2d. a pound, a figure that includes a good deal of bone. Salted chine was a regional speciality, particularly in Lincolnshire, where stuffed chine packed with a great quantity of chopped green herbs is still made and eaten cold; this recipe uses the same trick of forcing herbs into cuts in the meat. The accompanying onion, mushroom and vinegar sauce belongs to the long English tradition of serving something sharp with fat pork, the same reasoning that puts apple sauce or mustard on the plate. Mushroom ketchup, listed here as an interchangeable option with fresh mushrooms and mushroom powder, was one of the standard store-cupboard flavourings of the nineteenth-century kitchen, predating the dominance of the tomato version.