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Pork, Leg of, Fresh, Roasted
A fresh leg of pork ought not to be kept more than a day or two before being cooked. Score the skin at regular intervals round from the knuckle, or, if preferred, cut it into squares or diamonds, taking great care not to pierce the flesh. Rub the rind over with butter or sweet-oil to keep it from blistering; put it down at some distance from a clear fire, and baste constantly. Brown gravy and apple sauce, tomato sauce, and Robert sauce are all suitablo accompaniments to roast pork. Time, a joint weighing eight pounds will require three hours. Probable cost, 10 1/2d. to 1s. per pound. Sufcient, a moderate-sized leg of pork for eight or ten persons.
A spit-roasting instruction translated for an oven: the whole method assumes a joint hanging in front of an open fire, turning and dripping into a pan. The scoring and the fat rub are the parts that still matter.
- Oven equivalentRoast in a moderate oven, around 350F. A hot opening of 450F for 25-30 minutes to set the crackling is a modern addition; the original's "some distance from a clear fire" describes steady, moderate heat and implies no such initial blast.
- Timing and donenessThree hours for eight pounds works out to about 22 minutes per pound, which is close to modern practice for a bone-in leg. Cook to an internal temperature of 145F at the thickest point away from the bone, then rest 20-30 minutes; the old instruction to cook pork until grey and dry belongs to the trichinosis era and is not needed.
- Scoring the skinThe warning not to pierce the flesh is the hinge. Cuts through the rind and fat only let the fat render and the skin puff; a cut into the meat lets juice weep up into the skin and the crackling steams instead of crisping. A clean utility blade or a very sharp boning knife at shallow angle does it best.
- Butter or oil on the rindRub with oil and, unlike the original, add salt generously. Dry rind, oil and salt give crackling; butter's milk solids can scorch over a three-hour roast, so plain oil is the safer choice.
- BastingConstant basting made sense before a fire, where the surface dried and browned unevenly. In a closed oven, basting the rind actually softens it. Baste the underside if you like, keep the skin dry.
- Robert sauceSauce Robert is a brown sauce finished with softened onion, white wine or vinegar and mustard, stirred in off the heat so the mustard does not turn bitter. It is the sharp counterweight to the fat, as apple sauce is the sweet one.
- Hanging the meat"Not more than a day or two" reflects unrefrigerated larders. Modern vacuum-packed pork keeps to its date, but leaving the joint uncovered on a rack in the fridge overnight dries the rind and improves the crackling considerably.
- Cost and yieldThe pence-per-pound figures are Victorian and of no present use except as a comparison. Eight to ten servings from a moderate leg is if anything conservative by modern portions.
Cassell's dictionary was compiled for households that still had a range and, often enough, a fire large enough to roast in front of, which is why the direction is "put it down at some distance from a clear fire" rather than to set an oven. Fresh pork was seasonal and slightly suspect in British kitchens: much of the pig was preserved as bacon, ham and salt pork, and a fresh leg was a thing to eat quickly, hence the warning about keeping it more than a day or two. The three suggested sauces span a range of nineteenth-century English taste, from apple sauce, long established with pork, through tomato sauce, a more recent arrival, to sauce Robert, a French classical sauce generally traced to the medieval French kitchen and long associated with pork in particular.