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Pork Collops
Cut a pound of cold roast pork into neat slices. Trim off the fat, season with pepper and salt, cover up the slices to keep them from the dust, and put them aside. Mince finely two large onions and three apples, put them into a saucepan with two table-spoonfuls of moist sugar, and four of sherry. Let them simmer gently until reduced to pulp, stirring them every now and then to keep them from burning. Beat them until quite smooth. Broil the collops over a clear fire. Pour the sauce into the centre of a hot dish. Put the collops round, and serve. Time to broil the collops, eight minutes; one hour to simmer the sauce. Probable cost, 4d., exclusive of the wine and cold meat. Sufficient for two or three persons.
A Victorian way of using up Sunday's cold roast, dressed with an onion-and-apple sauce that is essentially a savoury apple butter. The whole thing hinges on the sauce, which takes an hour; the meat takes minutes.
- "Collops"Simply slices or small cuts of meat. Here they are slices of already-cooked roast pork, not raw chops; the recipe specifies only "neat slices" and gives no thickness.
- Broil means grillIn British usage of the period this is grilling over or under direct heat, not oven-roasting. A hot grill, a ridged pan or a heavy skillet all work.
- Eight minutes is too longThe pork is already cooked; eight minutes over a clear fire will dry it out. Two to three minutes a side, just to colour the edges and heat through, is plenty. If the slices are thin, less.
- Moist sugarUnrefined soft brown sugar, still damp from the refining process. Light or dark soft brown sugar is the direct equivalent; two tablespoons for two large onions and three apples makes the sauce distinctly sweet.
- The sauce needs helpOnions, apples, sugar and four tablespoons of sherry will not survive an hour of simmering without scorching. Cover the pan, keep the heat very low, and add a splash of water or stock if it tightens before the apple collapses. "Beat them until quite smooth" means mash or blend.
- ApplesA cooking apple that breaks down — Bramley or similar — is what is wanted. A firm eating apple will stay in pieces and need longer or a food processor at the end.
- Yield and costTwo to three portions from a pound of cold meat, as stated. The "4d." is the sauce and seasoning only, on the assumption that the pork and the sherry were already in the house.
Cassell's belongs to a generation of household dictionaries that treated the cold joint as a standing problem to be solved: a Sunday roast was expected to reappear in some altered form, and a good part of any Victorian cookery book is given over to the disguise. Pork with apple is an old pairing in northern Europe, both being autumn products, but the addition of onion, brown sugar and sherry pushes this particular sauce toward the sweet-sour dressings sometimes used for rich meats. The costing in pence, given separately from the wine and the meat, is characteristic of the period's cookery writing.