Home › Meats and Poultry › Roasted Pork Tenderloin
Roasted Pork Tenderloin
Take two tenderloins and split lengthwise. Place two together and fill with dressing made of bread, onion, egg, sage and seasoning. Wind a string around to keep them together. Season on the outside and tack on with toothpicks three slices of bacon. Roast as you would any other roast, about forty-five minutes.
This will make a nice cold meat dish sliced.-Mrs W. A. Chapman.
Sauerkraut with Spareribs (German way) Cover the kraut with cold water, add a little salt if necessary, and place on to boil fully three hours before using it.
About one hour before it is done, put your spareribs in and let them boil until they fall freely from the bones. Remove the spareribs, and stir in the kraut a grated raw potato from which you have allowed the water to run. Let it come to a boil after this, being careful that it doesn't burn on; remove from stove and serve. Mrs W. A. Chapman.
Two dishes from the same contributor, both written for a cook who already knew her stove. The tenderloin needs a temperature the original never gives, and the sauerkraut needs less time than three hours unless you want it grey.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because the book assumes a range you learned by hand. Roast at 375F; forty-five minutes is about right for two tenderloins bound together, but go by the thermometer, not the clock.
- DonenessWhole-muscle pork is safe at 145F with a three-minute rest, and tenderloin dries out fast beyond that. The bread dressing sandwiched between the two halves should reach 165F, since it carries raw egg and pork juices — check the stuffing, not just the meat.
- The split and the tieButterfly each tenderloin most of the way through and open it flat, then lay the two flattened pieces around the dressing so the thick end of one meets the thin end of the other. Kitchen twine at one-inch intervals is the modern equivalent of the string; toothpicks holding bacon will scorch, so tuck them under the twine instead.
- Dressing proportionsNone are given. Roughly 2 cups of dry bread crumbs or torn stale bread, one small onion sweated in butter, one egg, a teaspoon of dried sage and salt and pepper will fill two tenderloins. Keep it on the dry side — a wet dressing will not set before the pork overcooks.
- BaconModern supermarket bacon is generally thinner and wetter than the cured side pork such books would have used, and it may not crisp during the roast. Lay it over the top and, if it is still flabby at the end, finish two minutes under the broiler.
- Sauerkraut timingThree hours of boiling would suit a strongly sour barrel kraut. Jarred or bagged refrigerated kraut is far milder; forty-five minutes to an hour of gentle simmering is enough, and long boiling costs both flavor and texture.
- SpareribsAn hour will not bring modern ribs off the bone. Simmer a rack of spareribs, cut into two- or three-rib sections, for two to two and a half hours in the kraut liquid, keeping it at a bare simmer rather than a rolling boil.
- The grated potatoThis is the thickener — raw grated potato drained of its water, stirred in at the end and brought just to a boil so the starch swells. It scorches easily, exactly as the recipe warns; stir constantly and pull the pot off the heat as soon as it thickens.
- YieldNo yield is given. Two stuffed tenderloins will serve roughly four to six hot, or more sliced thin for the cold dish the recipe suggests. The kraut and ribs feed about four to six.
Both recipes come from the same contributor and read as household dishes of the sort that filled community compilations, in which cookbooks were assembled from members' contributions and printed with the donor's name attached. The sauerkraut is labeled "German way" - an acknowledgment that the kraut cookery of German-speaking immigrant households was understood as having its own method, and the grated raw potato stirred in at the last minute to bind the liquid is a thickening trick found in central European cooking. The stuffed tenderloin belongs to a different impulse: the note that it "will make a nice cold meat dish sliced" points to the era's concern with the second and third appearance of a roast, in an age of iceboxes and cold suppers.