Roast Chine
Chine should always be parboiled and stewed before roasting, to take away the gross taste which the melted fat frying from it gives. After this lay in the pan with one pint water in which it was boiled, from which all the fat has been skimmed. Put in this several whole leaves of sage, to be removed before serving--just to get the flavor; minced onion, and parsley. Baste and brown quickly that it may not dry.
This is only stewed chine browned.--Mrs. S. T.
This is a finishing method rather than a full recipe: the chine has already been simmered tender, and the oven work is only for colour and flavour. The instruction that matters is the skimming — the whole point of the parboil is to get rid of the fat that would otherwise fry off in the pan.
- What a chine isThe chine is the backbone section of the hog, cut with the meat still attached — closer to today's bone-in pork loin roast or a rack of country-style ribs than to anything sold as "chine" now. Ask a butcher for a bone-in pork loin roast or the rib end, 4-5 lb, and treat it the same way.
- The parboilSimmer the chine in water to cover, barely bubbling, until the meat is tender at the bone — roughly 1½ to 2 hours for a 4-5 lb piece. Cool the liquid enough that the fat rises and lift it off; the pint that goes into the roasting pan should be lean broth, not skimmed-in-haste stock.
- "Brown quickly""Brown quickly" calls for a hot oven — something in the 425-450F range for 20 to 30 minutes would do it, though the recipe itself gives no temperature. The meat is already cooked through, so the only aim is colour on the surface before the interior dries out.
- Internal temperatureWhole-muscle pork is done at 145F, but a long-parboiled chine will already be well past that and simply needs reheating to serving heat, 150-160F at the thickest point.
- BastingWith the fat skimmed away there is nothing rich in the pan, so baste often with the broth or the roast will go leathery at the edges.
- The sageWhole fresh sage leaves in a hot pan will scorch and turn bitter. Slip them under the meat or into the broth rather than on top, and lift them out before the dish goes to table, as the recipe directs.
- YieldA 4-5 lb bone-in loin serves six to eight. The skimmed pan liquid, reduced a little, makes the only sauce the dish needs.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by housekeepers of Virginia and her sister States, which is why so many entries close with initials — "Mrs. S. T." here — rather than a byline. Chine appears in it because a Virginia household that killed its own hogs had to find a use for every cut, and the backbone, heavy with bone and interlarded fat, was among the harder ones to make elegant. The two-stage treatment — simmer, skim, then brown — is a common nineteenth-century answer to a fatty cut, and the writer's complaint about "the gross taste which the melted fat frying from it gives" is a fair description of what happens when pork back fat renders at roasting heat and the meat sits in it. The frankness of the last line, admitting the dish is "only stewed chine browned," is characteristic of the book's contributors, who wrote for other housekeepers and saw no reason to dress up a method.