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Pork, Loin of, Roast
Score the skin of a fresh loin of pork at equal distances--about a quarter of an inch apart. Brush it over with salad-oil, and place the joint before a clear fire, though at a good distance from it, for fear the crackling should burn before the meat is sufficiently cooked. Baste liberally, and when done enough serve on a hot dish, and send brown gravy and apple sauce or Robert sauce to table with the meat. If liked, a little sage and onion stuffing may be served in a separate dish. It is better not to send it to table on the same dish as the meat, as many people object to the flavour. Time, a loin of pork weighing five pounds, about two hours. Probable cost, 9 1/2d. to 10 1/2d. per pound. Sufficient for six persons.
PORK, LOIN OF, ROAST, TO CARVE. (See PORK, LEG OF, ROAST, TO CARVE.)
This is a spit-roast written for an open fire, so the whole method has to be rethought for an oven. The crackling is the point of tension: it wants fierce dry heat, while the loin itself wants restraint.
- Fire to ovenThe book gives no temperature, only "before a clear fire, at a good distance," so any oven figure is a modern substitution rather than an equivalent. A moderate oven (around 325-350F) on a rack in a shallow tin, so the fat drains away, answers the description; if the skin needs blistering, a hot start of 20-25 minutes before dropping the heat will do it.
- Salad-oilSimply a mild table oil -- olive or a neutral vegetable oil. Rub it into the scored skin along with a generous scattering of salt, which the original assumes but does not say.
- Scoring the skinQuarter-inch spacing is right, but cut only through the skin and the top of the fat, not into the meat, or the juices escape and the crackling steams instead of crisping. The skin must be bone dry before oiling; pat it and leave it uncovered in the fridge for a few hours if there is time.
- BastingBaste the meat and the ends, not the crackling. Liquid on the skin is the one reliable way to ruin it. Modern loins are leaner than the Victorian pork this was written for, so a little extra fat in the tin is not wasted.
- Time and temperatureTwo hours for a 5 lb bone-in loin works out at about 24 minutes per pound, which will overshoot on today's meat. Cook to 145F at the centre and rest 15 minutes; expect closer to 1 1/2 hours. Pork no longer needs the long cooking Victorian cooks gave it.
- Robert sauceSauce Robert is a brown sauce finished with softened onion, white wine or vinegar and mustard -- sharp, savoury, and an alternative to apple rather than a companion to it.
- The separate stuffingSage and onion baked alongside the joint rather than inside it is sound practice, not just Victorian tact: a stuffed loin cooks unevenly, and the stuffing browns better in its own dish.
- Yield and costSix servings is realistic for 5 lb bone-in. The price in pence per pound is a period detail with no modern equivalent; costings of this kind run throughout the dictionary.
Cassell's was written for a household that might still roast on a spit or a jack in front of the grate, which is why the instruction is about distance from the fire rather than a temperature -- radiant heat from one side, turned constantly, with the dripping caught beneath. Apple sauce with pork is long-established English practice, the acidity cutting rich fat; sauce Robert is the French option, one of the older named brown sauces and generally traced in cookery literature to the seventeenth century or earlier. The note that stuffing should travel in its own dish because "many people object to the flavour" is the sort of practical social observation that fills this dictionary.