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Pork, Griskin of, Roasted
The griskin is usually roasted. It should be put down to a clear fire, and basted constantly, and brown gravy and apple sauce should be sent to table with it. If liked, a tea-spoonful of powdered sage may be sprinkled over it a few minutes before it is dished. As this joint is liable to be hard and dry when served, many cooks are accustomed, before roasting it, to put it in a saucepan of cold water, place it on the fire, and bring the liquid to the point of boiling; then dry it well, flour it, and roast it as above described. Time, twenty minutes to the pound. Probable cost, 11d. per pound.
A griskin is a lean cut that has largely disappeared from British butchery, so the first job is working out what to buy. After that the recipe is straightforward roasting, with one Victorian step — the pre-boil — that is worth understanding before you decide whether to keep it.
- What a griskin isThe griskin is the lean strip along the backbone at the neck end of the loin, left behind when the bacon pig was cut for curing — essentially the chine with very little fat on it. The nearest modern equivalents are a bone-in rack of pork from the neck end, or a boneless loin; a butcher will know it as the loin or chine end.
- Why it dries outThe whole difficulty with this joint is that it carries almost no fat cap and very little marbling. Whatever else you do, bard it with a sheet of back fat or streaky bacon, or the constant basting the recipe insists on becomes the only thing standing between you and a dry roast.
- The pre-boilBringing the joint to the boil in cold water and then drying and flouring it was probably intended to seal in the juices — a rationale now known to be wrong, and one that leaches flavour into water you then throw away. A brine of around 6% salt for a few hours, or a dry salting overnight, does more for a lean pork joint.
- "A clear fire"This means an open fire burned down past the smoking stage, with the meat on a spit or dangling before it. In an oven, 425F for the first 20 minutes to colour the surface, then 350F to finish, comes closest to the effect.
- Time and donenessTwenty minutes to the pound reflects an era when pork was cooked thoroughly as a matter of course. Modern pork is done at 145F in the centre with a three-minute rest; a thermometer will get you there long before the clock does, and on a joint this lean the difference is the whole dish.
- The sageA teaspoon of dried powdered sage sprinkled on at the end will taste dusty. Rub chopped fresh sage into the surface with the salt before roasting, or scatter it over during the last ten minutes so it has a chance to cook into the fat.
- ServingBrown gravy here means a stock-based gravy made in the roasting pan, not a flour-and-water one. A two to three pound griskin serves four to six; carve it across the grain in thin slices, as lean pork toughens noticeably in thick ones.
- The priceElevenpence a pound is pre-decimal currency and marks the griskin as an economical cut, cheaper than a loin roast.
The griskin belonged to a pig economy that no longer exists. When a household or a bacon curer broke down a pig, the sides went to salt and the hams to cure, and what remained along the backbone — lean, bony, unsuited to keeping — had to be eaten fresh and quickly. The word itself is generally traced to grice, an old term for a young pig, and by the eighteenth century it was in use for this lean chine or neck-end strip. Its appearance in Cassell's, at elevenpence a pound with a note that it is "liable to be hard and dry," tells you exactly where it sat: a cut you bought because it was cheap and cooked carefully because it punished carelessness. As pigs were bred leaner overall and whole-carcass butchery gave way to standard retail cuts, the griskin lost its distinct identity and was absorbed into the loin and neck. Apple sauce alongside is the standard English accompaniment of the period, its sharpness set against the fat of pork — a pairing long established in English cookery.