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PORK, LOIN OF, MARINADED (a German recipe)
Score a fresh loin of pork in the usual way, and rub it well with powdered sage; lay the meat in the salting-pan, and pour over it two pints of tarragon vinegar and two pints of cold water; add a dessert-spoonful of salt, one ounce and a half of bruised peppercorns, a piece of garlic the size of a pea, twelve young sage-leaves, and a small onion. Turn and rub the pork every day for three days. Take it up, drain it, rub it again with powdered sage, wrap it in an oiled paper, and roast before a clear fire. Baste liberally with the pickle. Serve on a hot dish, and send a sauce prepared as follows to table with the meat. Mix smoothly in a saucepan two ounces of butter and a table-spoonful of flour; add gradually half a pint of the pickle with which the pork has been basted, a tea-spoonful of moist sugar, half a tea-spoonful of salt, a pinch of cayenne, and a glass of port. Simmer the sauce over a gentle fire until it is of the consistency of cream, and send it to table in a tureen. Time to roast, allow twenty-five minutes per pound. Probable cost, pork, 9 1/2d. to 10 1/2d. per pound.
A three-day acid marinade in the style of a sauerbraten, applied to pork rather than beef. Two things need attention: the marinade must be kept cold, and the pickle must be boiled before it goes anywhere near the table.
- Boil the pickle before using itThe basting liquid and the half pint that goes into the sauce have been sitting with raw pork for three days. Bring it to a full boil for several minutes and strain it before you baste with it or build the sauce on it; the sauce's own gentle simmer is not a reliable substitute.
- The salting-pan means the refrigeratorA Victorian larder or cool cellar ran perhaps 45-55F. Use a non-reactive vessel (glass, glazed stoneware, stainless, or a heavy zip bag) and keep it in the refrigerator for the three days, turning and rubbing daily as directed. Do not marinade raw pork at room temperature.
- Roasting temperature"Before a clear fire" means spit-roasting in radiant heat. In an oven, 350F with the loin on a rack over a tray is the nearest equivalent, and the tray catches the pickle you baste with.
- Twenty-five minutes per pound is too longRoast to an internal 145F at the thickest point, away from bone, and rest fifteen minutes; a boneless 4 lb loin typically needs about 60-75 minutes at 350F.
- UnitsA dessert-spoonful is about 2 teaspoons. Half a pint here is imperial, so roughly 1 1/4 US cups. A glass of port means a wine glass, about 2 fl oz. The 1 1/2 oz of bruised peppercorns is genuinely a large amount, around 6 tablespoons, and it is for the marinade rather than the meat's surface.
- Ingredients that have changed nameMoist sugar is soft light brown sugar. Tarragon vinegar is still sold; four pints of liquid in total is enough to cover a loin in a snug dish.
- Oiled paperParchment brushed with oil, tied on with kitchen string, protects the surface from the fierce radiant heat of a fire. In an oven it is optional; tent loosely with parchment or foil if the fat and sage begin to scorch, and remove it for the last twenty minutes to colour the crackling.
- Scoring "in the usual way"Cut through the rind and just into the fat at half-inch intervals, not into the meat. This also lets the sage and the marinade reach the fat layer.
- YieldA 4-5 lb loin serves six to eight, with roughly half to three-quarters of a pint of the port sauce.
This is the sauerbraten principle transplanted onto pork: a long vinegar marinade with peppercorns, onion and garlic, then a roast, then a sauce built from the strained pickle. In German practice such marinades were as much preservation as flavouring, a way of holding fresh meat for several days in a cool larder while the acid softened tougher cuts, and the technique is generally traced to that double purpose rather than to any single region. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled in late nineteenth-century London, printed dozens of dishes tagged "a German recipe" or "a French recipe" as a matter of course, reflecting how confidently the Victorian middle-class kitchen borrowed from the Continent. The sage is the English contribution — pork and sage was already an old pairing in Britain — while the finishing glass of port and the roux-thickened sauce in a tureen are pure period house style. The costing of 9 1/2d to 10 1/2d a pound is typical of the book, which priced nearly every entry so a housekeeper could weigh the dish against her weekly budget.