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Pork Chops, Broiled
Cut the chops rather less than half an inch thick. Have a clear fire; make the gridiron hot before putting the chops upon it, and let them be at such a distance that they may be done through. Pepper them before putting them down, and two or three minutes before they are done sprinkle a little salt over them, and, if liked, a little finely-chopped sage or tarragon. Turn them frequently, and serve very hot. Tomato sauce, piquant sauce, Italian sauce, or Robert sauce, may be sent to table with them. Time to broil, sixteen to eighteen minutes. Probable cost, 1s. per pound. Sufficient, one pound for two persons.
A gridiron chop over live coals, written for a fire you managed by moving the meat rather than by turning a dial. The one thing to change is the timing.
- Sixteen minutes is far too longSixteen minutes is likely too long -- a chop cut under half an inch thick can reach 145F in roughly six to eight minutes total over high heat. The original time assumes a wood or coal fire with the meat held at a distance, and modern pork is generally leaner than Victorian pork; go by a thermometer rather than the clock.
- Cook to temperature145F at the thickest point with a three-minute rest is the current standard for whole-muscle pork, and it leaves the centre faintly pink. The older habit of cooking pork to grey throughout dates from trichinella fears that no longer apply to commercial pork.
- The gridironA ridged cast-iron grill pan or an outdoor grill over direct heat both reproduce it. "Have a clear fire" means coals burnt down past flame and smoke, so there is radiant heat rather than soot; preheat the pan or grate hard before the chops go on, as instructed.
- Salt at the endThe recipe holds the salt back until the last two or three minutes, though it gives no reason for doing so. Current practice is the opposite: salt the chops 40 minutes to overnight ahead, which seasons the meat through and helps it brown. Salting only at the last moment gives a seasoned surface and a bland interior.
- Turning frequentlyThis is sound and worth keeping. Frequent turns cook a thin chop more evenly and reduce the grey band under the crust; the once-only rule is a later piece of grilling folklore.
- Robert sauce and the restSauce Robert is a brown sauce with onion, white wine, vinegar and mustard. "Piquant sauce" is a similar brown base sharpened with vinegar, shallots and chopped gherkin or capers. "Italian sauce" in Victorian usage is a brown or white sauce with mushrooms and herbs. Any sharp mustard-and-vinegar pan sauce serves the same purpose against the fat.
- Yield and costOne pound for two people; at the thickness specified that is more likely three or four thin chops than two thick ones. The '1s. per pound' is a shilling, a pricing note for the Victorian British reader and of no use now beyond showing pork sat at the cheaper end of the butcher's counter.
Cassell's belonged to the era when the gridiron was still standard equipment in a British kitchen: a set of parallel iron bars on short feet, set over the open coals of a range, used for chops, steaks, kidneys and herrings. The instruction to make the gridiron hot before the meat touches it and to keep the chops far enough from the fire to cook through is the whole technique in two clauses, and it survived into gas grilling almost unchanged. The choice of sage or tarragon reflects long-standing English practice of pairing pork with sage, while the list of sauces to be "sent to table" shows the French-influenced repertoire a well-run Victorian household was expected to have on hand, several of them made from the same brown foundation sauce kept going in the kitchen. Pork chops were cheap protein, and the note that a pound feeds two tells you the portion size expected of a meat course served alongside other dishes.