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Pork Chops, Bread-Crumbed and Broiled
Trim the chops as in the next recipe, season them pleasantly, and dip them in clarified butter, or brush them over with oil; then egg and bread-crumb them. Broil them over a clear fire; turn them frequently. Serve very hot. Send tomato or piquant sauce to table with them. Time to broil, sixteen to eighteen minutes. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient for one person.
A plain pané chop, cooked over direct heat. The whole difficulty is keeping the crumb coating from burning before the meat is done, which is why the original insists on a clear fire and frequent turning.
- The hinge: heat that is steady, not fierceA "clear fire" means coals burned down past flame and smoke — strong but even radiant heat. Under a modern gas or electric broiler, use a middle rack rather than the top one, and expect to turn the chops every two or three minutes so the crumbs colour rather than char.
- "Broil" means grillIn British usage of this period, broiling was cooking on a gridiron over the fire, not under an overhead element. A ridged grill pan or an outdoor grill is closer to the original than an oven broiler, though all three work.
- Trimming, from "the next recipe"The cross-reference points to the neighbouring chop recipe, which is not reproduced here; the usual treatment of the period was to remove the rind and all but a thin edge of fat, scrape the bone end clean, and nick the fat rim in two or three places so the chop does not curl on the grid.
- Clarified butter or oil, then egg and crumbThe fat coat is what makes the egg cling to a wet-surfaced chop and helps the crumbs brown. Clarified butter is preferable to whole butter, whose milk solids darken quickly at grilling heat — though the original gives oil as an equally good alternative.
- Sixteen to eighteen minutesThat timing suggests a thick loin chop, an inch or more, cooked at a respectful distance from coals. Supermarket chops are often half that thickness and are likely to be done in eight to ten minutes. Cook to an internal 145F (63C) and rest at least three minutes; modern pork does not need the grey-through cooking Victorian cooks assumed.
- Piquant sauceSauce piquante of the period is a brown sauce sharpened with vinegar and shallots and finished with chopped gherkins and capers. Tomato sauce here means a cooked, sieved savoury sauce, not ketchup.
- Cost and yield"1s. per pound" is a Victorian shilling, a period price note with no modern equivalent. "Sufficient for one person" means one chop per diner; scale straight up.
Cassell's is a dictionary rather than a narrative cookbook, so pork chops get a run of near-identical entries — plain broiled, bread-crumbed and broiled, fried, baked — each a small variation on the same cut, which is why this one refers to "the next recipe" for the trimming. The egg-and-crumb finish is the English domestic descendant of French pané cookery. In a late-Victorian kitchen the gridiron sat over an open coal range, and the recipe's insistence on a clear fire is practical rather than decorative: a smoky or flaring fire would taste the crumbs before it cooked the meat.