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PORK, LOIN OF, BAKED (German method)
Score the skin of a fresh loin of pork; sprinkle a tea-spoonful of salt over it, and lay it in a baking-dish with half a cupful of stock or water; baste liberally. When the meat is half cooked, sprinkle two table-spoonfuls of caraway-seeds over it. The brown gravy which is in the dish may be served with the meat. The fat must be cleared from it, and it must be strained and seasoned with pepper and salt. Time to bake, allow twenty-five minutes for every pound. Probable cost, 9 1/2d. to 10 1/2d. per pound.
A plain German roast that depends on two things the original leaves unstated: an oven temperature and a finishing point for the meat. Both need supplying before you start.
- The timing is the thing to changeTwenty-five minutes per pound will take a modern loin well past dry. Pork is safe at an internal 145F with a three-minute rest, and a boneless loin will reach that in roughly 20 minutes per pound at 350F; use a probe thermometer rather than the clock. The longer old timing suits a slower, less controllable oven, and reflects an era when thorough cooking of pork was the universal rule.
- Oven heatCassell gives none. Start at 450F for 20 minutes to blister the scored skin, then drop to 350F for the rest of the cooking. Going in at a moderate heat throughout gives leathery rind rather than crackling.
- Scoring the skinThis calls for a loin with the rind still on, which usually means ordering from a butcher, as supermarket loin is generally sold skinned. Score through the fat but not into the meat, at quarter-inch intervals, and dry the surface thoroughly before salting.
- Caraway at the halfway markTwo tablespoons is a lot, and the late addition suits the seed, which scorches and turns bitter over a long roast. Scatter it over the meat and into the pan juices once the skin has set.
- Half a cupful of stockRoughly 4 to 5 fl oz, depending on what size cup is meant; the measure was not standardised. Top it up if the pan threatens to run dry, or the gravy will catch and the fond will burn rather than brown.
- Basting versus cracklingThe recipe says baste liberally, which works against crisp skin. Baste the sides and ends and keep liquid off the scored rind, or accept soft skin and remove it to crisp separately under the grill.
- The gravySkim the fat, strain, season, and reduce briefly on the hob — as written it is thin pan juice, not a thickened sauce.
- Cost and yieldThe price is pre-decimal sterling, about tenpence a pound, and tells you only that pork was cheap meat. A 4 lb loin serves six to eight; the classic accompaniments are potatoes, braised cabbage or sauerkraut.
Caraway with roast pork points squarely at the southern German and Austrian kitchen, where Schweinebraten seasoned with salt, caraway and sometimes garlic is a standing dish, and where a caraway-heavy roast may still be called a K ell's New Dictionary of Cookery ran to thousands of entries and cast a wide net for foreign methods, tagging them by nationality as here; the late-Victorian British cook was being offered a continental variation on a familiar joint. The seed itself was long familiar in Britain — seed cake was a fixture — but its use with meat was distinctly foreign, and the recipe's spare, unsauced treatment, with the pan juices simply degreased and strained, may sit closer to German practice than to the flour-thickened gravies often associated with the English roast dinner.