Home › The Principles of Cookery › Pork, Rolled
Pork, Rolled
Bone a leg of pork; have ready a forcemeat of chopped sage, bread-crumbs, allspice, salt, and pepper; put this stuffing within the meat, and roll it up tight. Roast gently, keeping the meat at first some distance from the fire; froth it with butter and flour a few minutes before serving.
A boned, stuffed and rolled leg of pork, written for a cook working at an open fire with a spit. The method transfers to an oven with only two real changes: a fixed temperature and a thermometer.
- The hinge: roll it tight and tie itA boned leg is a large, awkward slab, and a loose roll cooks unevenly and unravels as the fat renders. Roll it firmly with the grain running the length of the joint and tie with butcher's twine at 1-inch intervals before it goes near heat.
- "Some distance from the fire"At a spit this meant starting the joint back from the coals so the interior warmed before the outside set. In an oven the equivalent is a moderate, steady heat rather than a hot start: roast throughout at about 325F, saving the fierce heat for the frothing at the end.
- Timing and internal temperatureReckon roughly 25-30 minutes per pound at 325F, but go by the thermometer rather than the clock. Because the joint is boned and stuffed it is no longer whole muscle: take the stuffing itself, which sits at the coolest point, to 165F, which will carry the meat past 145F as well.
- Buying the legA whole boned leg runs 10-14 lb and will feed 15 or more. A half leg, or a boned shoulder of 4-5 lb, is far more manageable, though the shoulder is fattier and looser in texture; ask the butcher to bone it for rolling.
- The forcemeatNo quantities are given. For a 5 lb joint, work with roughly 4 oz fresh breadcrumbs, 2 tablespoons chopped sage, half a teaspoon ground allspice, and salt and pepper, bound with an egg and a little melted butter or the chopped pork fat. Dry crumbs alone will fall out of the roll.
- FrothingFrothing means dredging the hot joint with flour and basting with butter in the last few minutes so the surface puffs and browns to a rough, crisp finish. Do it at high heat, 425F or under a grill, and watch it, since the flour scorches quickly.
- Resting and carvingRest the tied joint 20 minutes under loose foil before untying. Carve across the roll so each slice shows a spiral of stuffing.
- GravyThe recipe stops at the roast. Pour off most of the fat and deglaze the tin with stock or cider; whatever flour has dropped from the frothing will thicken it only slightly, so add a little more if you want body.
Sage, pork and breadcrumbs is one of the oldest fixed partnerships in English cookery, and the Victorian household books treat it as self-evident: sage-and-onion stuffing for goose and duck, sage forcemeat for pork. The pairing is usually explained as sage cutting the richness of fatty meat, and the herb's long-standing reputation as an aid to digestion probably helped fix the habit. What dates this particular entry is the fire management -- keeping the joint well back at first, then frothing it with butter and flour at the end -- which is spit-roasting language, written when a large joint turned in front of an open range rather than sitting in a closed oven. Boning and rolling a leg served a practical end in a large household: it made the joint carve into neat portions and stretched the meat with a cereal stuffing.