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PORK, LOIN OF, SAVOURY (another way)
Score a small loin of pork as before. Make a savoury mixture of a moderate-sized onion chopped small, a piece of garlic the size of a pea also chopped, a dessert-spoonful of salt, a salt-spoonful of pepper, the sixth part of a nutmeg, grated, a tea-spoonful of shredded parsley, half a tea-spoonful of powdered thyme, and a bay-leaf cut small. Stir this powder into a quarter of a pint of salad-oil, and rub the pork well with the mixture. Put it into an earthen pan, and let it remain closely covered for two days, turning it every day. Take it up, wrap it in well-oiled paper, and roast as in the preceding recipe. Serve on a hot dish, and send a sauce prepared as follows to table in a tureen. Mince finely a moderate-sized onion and a sharp apple. Put these into a small saucepan with a tea-spoonful of sugar, half a tea-spoonful of mustard, half a tea-spoonful of salt, a pinch of cayenne, and the strained juice of a lemon. Stir them over the fire for a minute or two, then pour over them half a pint of nicely-flavoured stock, and let the sauce simmer gently for twenty minutes. Serve the sauce in a tureen. Time to roast the pork, twenty-five minutes per pound. Probable cost, 9 1/2d. to 10 1/2d. per pound.
A two-day oil marinade for a scored loin, followed by roasting in oiled paper and a sharp apple-and-onion gravy. Two things need attention before you start: where the pork sits for those two days, and how long it stays in the oven.
- Marinate cold, not covered on the benchAn earthen pan "closely covered" for two days meant a cool larder; a modern kitchen has nothing comparable. Use a non-reactive dish or a bag in the refrigerator, turning once a day, and bring the joint out an hour before roasting.
- The unitsA quarter of a pint of oil is 5 fl oz (about 150 ml) in imperial measure, and the half pint of stock is 10 fl oz (about 285 ml). A dessert-spoonful is 2 teaspoons; a salt-spoonful is roughly a quarter teaspoon.
- Salad-oilIn Victorian usage this is table oil for dressings — usually olive, sometimes a light nut or seed oil. Any neutral oil or a mild olive oil does the job here, since it is a carrier for the aromatics rather than a flavour in itself.
- Roasting timeTwenty-five minutes per pound suits a slower roast and pork expected to be cooked very thoroughly. In a modern oven at 350F, allow about 20 minutes per pound and cook to 145F (63C) at the centre of the meat, then rest 15 minutes. Loin is lean and dries out quickly past that point.
- Oiled paperParchment, or foil, serves the same purpose — it keeps the spice paste from scorching. Unwrap for the last 20 to 30 minutes if you want the scored rind to crisp; leave it wrapped and the rind stays leathery.
- Scoring"Score as before" means cutting through the rind and just into the fat at close intervals, not slashing the meat. The cuts let the marinade in and let the fat render out.
- The sauce is thin by designTwenty minutes of simmering will not thicken half a pint of stock much. Either reduce it further until it coats a spoon, or push it through a sieve for a smooth, sharp gravy in the French manner. Taste at the end — a whole lemon's juice with mustard and cayenne can be very forward.
- YieldThe recipe does not define 'a small loin'; something in the region of 3 to 4 lb would serve six to eight, and the sauce quantity would suit that.
Cassell's presents this as an alternative to a plain savoury loin, and the difference is the marinade: two days in oil with onion, thyme, bay, nutmeg and a notably small amount of garlic — "a piece the size of a pea" — which may suggest how cautiously garlic was handled in English middle-class cookery of the period, even in a recipe otherwise built on French practice. The technique belongs to the older tradition of the marinade, which is sometimes described as a keeping device as much as a flavouring. The apple-and-onion sauce is the English pork-and-applesauce pairing rebuilt as a sharp brown gravy with mustard and cayenne rather than a sweet purée. The "probable cost" line closing the entry is a fixture of Cassell's, which was written for households running to a budget and keeping accounts.