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PORK, LOIN OF (a la Francaise)
Take a piece of the loin, neck, or spare-rib of pork; score the skin neatly in lines about a quarter of an inch apart, and rub it over with salad-oil. Put it into a deep baking-dish with eighteen or twenty apples, pared, cored, and quartered, as many potatoes peeled and divided, and nine or ten moderate-sized onions. Put the dish in a well-heated oven, and when the meat and vegetables are done enough serve them on a hot dish, the meat being placed in the centre, and the apples, onions, and potatoes arranged round it. Time to bake a joint weighing about four pounds, an hour and a half. Probable cost, 9 1/2d. to 10 1/2d. per pound. Sufficient for six or seven persons.
A straightforward one-dish pork roast, though the fruit and vegetables need staggering if they are not all to arrive at once. The proportions are generous even by Victorian standards.
- Oven temperature"A well-heated oven" has no exact modern equivalent; something in the region of 400-425F to set the scored skin, easing back to 350-375F once it has coloured, suits the hour and a half given for a 4 lb joint.
- DonenessCook to 145F at the thickest point of a loin, then rest 10 minutes; a neck or spare-rib end, being fattier and more sinewy, is usually better taken to 160-165F. Recipes of this period generally expected pork to be cooked well through, further than a modern loin takes happily.
- Salad-oilPlain olive oil, or any neutral oil. Rub the scored skin with coarse salt as well as oil if crackling is the object; the salt is what dries the rind.
- ScoringQuarter-inch lines cut through the skin and just into the fat, not into the meat. Loins are often sold with the rind removed, so ask a butcher for it on if crackling matters.
- Stagger the vegetablesPotatoes and onions want the full 90 minutes; quartered apples will collapse to sauce in that time. Add the apples in the last 25-30 minutes if you want recognisable pieces, or accept that they melt into the pan juices, which is arguably the better result.
- QuantitiesEighteen to twenty apples and nine or ten onions against 4 lb of meat is a great deal of bulk. For six people, 6 apples, 8-10 potatoes and 4 onions fill a large roasting tin without steaming rather than browning.
- The dish"A deep baking-dish" means a roasting tin. Crowd the vegetables in a single layer under and around the joint so they take up the fat; two tins are better than one heaped one.
- Cost9 1/2d. to 10 1/2d. per pound is pre-decimal British currency, twelve pence to the shilling. It suggests pork was a fairly ordinary meat rather than a luxury.
Pork with apples is a long-established English pairing, the fruit's acidity cutting the fat, and cooking meat above its vegetables long predates the domestic oven this recipe assumes. The title's "a la Francaise" is doing very little French work: French names were often attached to English dishes in this period to lend them standing, and what distinguishes this version from a plain roast is simply that everything cooks in one dish rather than the meat being roasted and the vegetables boiled separately. The large quantities of fruit and vegetables suit households where meat was the expensive item and bulk came from the garden.