Pork Royal
Take a piece of shoulder of fresh pork, fill with grated bread and the crust soaked, pepper, salt, onion, sage and thyme: a bit of butter and lard. Place in a pan with some water; when about half done, place around it some large apples; when done, place your pork on a dish, with the apples round it; put flour and water on your pan, flour browned, some thyme and sage; boil, strain through a very small colander over your pork and apples.
A stuffed fresh pork shoulder roasted with apples, with pan gravy thickened by browned flour. The original assumes a cook who knows her joint and her fire, so the missing parts are the temperature, the time and the doneness.
- The cut"Fresh pork" means uncured — a raw shoulder, not ham or bacon. Buy a boned and rolled picnic or Boston butt of 4-6 lb so there is a cavity to fill; a bone-in shoulder can be butterflied and tied around the stuffing instead.
- The stuffing"Grated bread and the crust soaked" is one stuffing made two ways: dry crumbs from the crumb, plus the crusts softened in water or milk and squeezed out. Together they give body without pastiness. Season it assertively — onion, sage, thyme, salt, pepper — and bind with the butter and lard.
- Oven and timeThe original gives no oven, no fire and no timing; it would have been cooked in whatever the writer's kitchen offered, oven or hearth. Roast at 325F, allowing roughly 30 minutes per pound. Shoulder is a working muscle: it is safe at 145F internal but only becomes tender around 190F, so plan for the long end.
- The water in the panA cup or so, no more. It keeps the drippings from scorching and gives you the base for the gravy; too much and the joint steams rather than browns. Top up if the pan runs dry.
- When to add the applesHalfway is correct — whole apples put in at the start collapse to sauce. Use a firm cooking variety that holds shape, and score the skins around the middle so they do not burst.
- Browned flourThis was a pantry staple: flour toasted dry in a pan or slow oven until nut-coloured, kept in a jar. It thickens less than raw flour but supplies the dark colour and roasted flavour the gravy is after. Brown a few tablespoons in a dry skillet, stirring constantly, and use a mix of browned and plain flour if you want both colour and body.
- Straining"A very small colander" means a fine one — pass the gravy through a sieve to catch the herb stalks and flour lumps before it goes over the meat.
- YieldA 5 lb shoulder with stuffing serves eight, with meat left for the next day.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, records a plantation-and-townhouse cookery in which pork was the everyday meat: hogs were killed in the cold months, most of the animal salted or smoked, and the fresh cuts eaten quickly before they spoiled. A roast of fresh shoulder was therefore a seasonal dish, tied to hog-killing, and the sage-and-onion bread stuffing with apples alongside is straight English practice carried over and kept. The "Royal" in the title is decorative rather than descriptive. Browned flour, called for here, is a good marker of the era's kitchen: cooks toasted flour in quantity and stored it for exactly this purpose.