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Pork, Leg of, Stuffed and Roasted
Mince finely three large onions which have been previously boiled or not, according to taste; mix with them half a dozen chopped sage-leaves, four ounces of bread-crumbs, an ounce of butter, a little pepper and salt, and half an apple chopped small. Bind the force-meat together with the yolk of an egg. Raise the skin round the knuckle of the leg of pork, fasten the stuffing in securely, and brush the rind all over with sweet-oil. Put it down at some distance from a clear fire, and baste liberally. Serve the meat on a hot dish, and send brown gravy and apple sauce to table with it. If any gravy is put into the dish it should be poured round, but not upon, the meat. The flavour of this joint will be improved if it is stuffed the day before it is roasted. Time, a joint weighing eight pounds will require three hours. Probable cost, 10 1/2d. to 1s. per pound. Sufficient for twelve persons.
A spit-roasting recipe adapted easily enough to an oven, provided you treat the stuffing and the crackling as two separate problems.
- The joint itselfA leg of pork at 8 lb is a fresh (uncured) ham, bone in, rind on. Butchers often sell it in halves now; a half leg of 4-5 lb will serve six and needs roughly half the stated time, judged by thermometer rather than clock.
- Fire to oven"Down at some distance from a clear fire" means radiant heat with a dripping pan below. In an oven, start at 450F for 25-30 minutes to set the rind, then drop to 325-350F for the remainder. Reckon 25-30 minutes per pound at the lower temperature and check the interior.
- Doneness145F with a rest is the safe minimum for any whole cut of pork, a bone-in leg included. Many cooks take a large leg further, to around 160F at the thickest part away from the bone, on the grounds that the connective tissue in the leg slices better with a higher finish; that is a matter of texture rather than safety.
- Stuff on the day, not the day beforeThe book's suggestion of stuffing 24 hours ahead is the one instruction to ignore. A bread-and-egg forcemeat packed inside raw pork and held overnight sits in the temperature range where bacteria multiply, and the centre of a stuffed joint is the last part to reach a safe heat. Mix the forcemeat a day ahead if you like the flavour, keep it chilled separately, and insert it just before roasting -- or bake it alongside in a dish.
- Sweet oilSweet oil is olive oil, used here to help the rind blister. Score the rind in narrow lines through the fat but not into the flesh, rub with oil and coarse salt, and keep basting liquid off the skin itself, or it will steam rather than crackle.
- Sage and onionHalf a dozen sage leaves is about a tablespoon chopped, or roughly a teaspoon of dried. Four ounces of breadcrumbs is about two cups of fresh crumbs; an ounce of butter is two tablespoons. Boiling the onions first, as the recipe permits, gives a softer, sweeter stuffing.
- Gravy and sauce'Brown gravy' in this period usually meant a made gravy built on stock rather than the roasting juices alone, though the recipe gives no method. The instruction to pour it round rather than over the meat may be to keep the crackling dry and crisp on the dish.
- The money"10 1/2d. to 1s. per pound" is pre-decimal British currency: ten and a half pence to one shilling (twelve pence). The figure means nothing today.
Sage-and-onion stuffing with apple is a standard English dressing for pork: sage and onion cut richness, apple supplies acidity, and the same combination reappears in the apple sauce served alongside. The instruction to raise the skin at the knuckle and pack stuffing beneath it reflects a period when a cook was expected to handle a whole limb of an animal rather than a boneless cut.