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Pork, Loin of, with Fried Potatoes
Roast a piece of the loin or spare-rib of pork in the usual way. Baste liberally, and when it is almost done enough, take six or eight large potatoes--kidney potatoes are best for the purpose, as they do not break whilst cooking so much as the regents--wash and peel them, dry them well in a napkin, and cut them into slices the eighth of an inch thick. Pour the fat which has dropped from the pork, into a small deep saucepan. When it is quite hot, throw the potatoes into it, and move them about occasionally that they may be equally cooked. Drain them from the fat, and serve the pork on a hot dish, the fried potatoes being arranged round it; send brown gravy to table in a tureen. Time, ten minutes to fry the potatoes. Probable cost: pork, 9 1/2d. to 10 1/2d. per pound.
The recipe assumes you already know how to roast pork and treats the potatoes as the point of interest — they are fried in the dripping while the joint rests. Two details carry the dish: dry potato slices and genuinely hot fat.
- "Roast in the usual way"The book gives no temperature. In a modern oven, a bone-in loin or spare-rib at 350F for roughly 20-25 minutes per pound should reach an internal temperature of 145F at the thickest point away from the bone; rest 15 minutes. Victorian cooks generally took pork well past this point; modern pork does not need it.
- Kidney and regent potatoes"kidney" described a class of long, waxy potatoes rather than one variety, and "Regent" was a floury sort grown from the late eighteenth century on. The recipe makes the distinction itself: kidneys do not break up as much as regents. Substitute any waxy potato -- Yukon Gold, Charlotte, red-skinned -- rather than a russet.
- Dry them properlyThe napkin is not decorative. Wet slices drop the fat temperature, steam instead of frying, and stick together. Pat them thoroughly dry after peeling and slicing.
- The fat and the panPork dripping fries beautifully, though a roasting pan may yield less than the recipe assumes. A small deep saucepan with 1 to 1 1/2 inches of fat is what is wanted; top up with lard or a neutral oil if the joint has been lean.
- Temperature over timingTen minutes only works if the fat is at 350-375F and the pan is not crowded. Fry in two or three batches; slices this thin will colour in three to four minutes each. Salt them the moment they come out of the fat.
- Brown gravyNo gravy recipe is given at this entry. Deglaze the roasting pan with stock, thicken lightly with a little flour cooked in the remaining fat, and strain into the tureen.
- YieldSix to eight large potatoes point to four to six at table; the recipe does not state the size of the joint.
- The pricesNine and a half to ten and a half pence per pound is pre-decimal currency and tells you only roughly where pork sat among the meats of the period. It is a period marker, not a shopping guide.
Cassell's arranges its entries alphabetically as a dictionary, which is why a whole dish appears under the headword "Pork" with its accompaniment named in the title — the book is indexing combinations a cook might be asked for, not composing menus. Frying potatoes in the dripping from the joint they will be served with is thrift rather than invention: a roast gave up fat that no Victorian kitchen would pour away, and the same practice underlies roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding cooked under beef, and the dripping toast eaten across households. The named varieties are the interesting part. Kidney potatoes and regents were among the standard market types of the period, distinguished by cooks precisely as this recipe distinguishes them, by whether they held together in the pan. "Kidney" survives as a descriptor for waxy salad potatoes, and the waxy-versus-floury division these names describe is still the first thing worth knowing about any potato.