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PORK, LEG OF, AS GOOSE (Dr. Kitchener's recipe)
Parboil a leg of pork, and take off the skin. Make a stuffing as follows. Mince two ounces of onion very finely; if the strong flavour is objected to, the onions may be previously boiled. Mix with the onions half a chopped apple, four ounces of bread-crumbs, half a dozen chopped sage-leaves, an ounce of butter, and a little pepper and salt. Bind the mixture together with the yolk of an egg. Make a slit in the knuckle, put the stuffing into it, and fasten securely. Put the pork down to a clear fire, and baste liberally. Half an hour before it is taken up, sprinkle over it a savoury powder made of two table-spoonfuls of bread-crumbs mixed with one table-spoonful of powdered sage, and a little pepper and salt. Do not baste the meat after the powder is put upon it. Serve with good brown gravy and apple sauce. Time, a leg of pork weighing six pounds will require one hour's gentle boiling, and roasting for one hour and a half. Probable cost, 10 1/2d. to 1s. per pound. Sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A leg of pork treated with the sage-and-onion stuffing normally given to goose, boiled first and then roasted. The method works in a modern oven with two adjustments: the fire becomes a roasting tin, and the finish needs watching.
- The hinge: the savoury powderOnce the crumb-and-sage mixture goes on, basting stops, so the coating dries into a crust rather than washing off. Baste heavily right up to that moment, then leave it alone for the last 30 minutes.
- Fire to oven"Put the pork down to a clear fire" means spit-roasting before an open hearth. In an oven, roast at 350F, uncovered, on a rack over a tin. Start at 425F for 20 minutes if you want colour, then drop to 350F.
- Temperature, not clockOne hour's simmer plus 90 minutes' roasting for a 6 lb leg is in the right region, but cook to an internal 145F at the thickest part, away from bone, and rest 15 minutes. The parboil gives the roast a head start, so check early.
- Weights in the stuffingTwo ounces of onion is about half a small onion, a scant half cup minced. Four ounces of breadcrumbs is roughly two cups of fresh crumbs or one cup dried. An ounce of butter is two tablespoons.
- Six sage leavesHalf a dozen fresh leaves, finely chopped, is about a tablespoon; for the powder, a tablespoon of dried rubbed sage is a great deal and can be halved without loss.
- The skinThe skin comes off after parboiling, so there will be no crackling under the crumb coating. Leave a good layer of fat on the joint or the roast will dry.
- Stuffing a legThe slit at the knuckle end is small; expect to use only part of the mixture. Bake the remainder in a buttered dish alongside for the last 40 minutes rather than forcing it into the joint.
- Cost and yieldTenpence-halfpenny to a shilling a pound is the price given in the original and is of little use now beyond showing pork was sold by the pound. Eight to ten portions is what the recipe claims for a 6 lb bone-in leg.
Dr. William Kitchiner, whose Apicius Redivivus, or The Cook's Oracle (1817) was raided by cookery compilers for the rest of the century, is the source Cassell's credits here. The conceit of dressing pork "as goose" is older than either: sage and onion stuffing with apple sauce was the standard English treatment for goose, and applying it to a leg of pork gave a cheaper joint the flavour of a festival bird. The same borrowing lies behind the mock goose or "poor man's goose" of nineteenth-century cookbooks, often said to be made with liver or a shoulder of mutton. Parboiling before roasting was routine when the roast hung before a fire that browned the outside long before the middle was done.