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To Cook Backbone or Chine
Cut the chine in three pieces; the large end must be about a foot long, the remainder cut in half. Put it in a pot of water and boil for two hours; then put it in a pan, baste and set it in the stove to brown. Peel some Irish potatoes and put them in the pot; boil till done, mash them up and season with pepper, a little salt, and some of the gravy dripping out of the chine while baking; spread them in the dish, then lay the chine on top. The largest piece is generally put aside to eat cold, and is very nice. Turnips are good, cooked in the same wayoas potatoes, with the chine.
The chine and ham of a hog are nice, corned like beef.--Mrs. P. W.
A plain boiled-then-browned pork backbone, served over mashed potatoes moistened with its own drippings. The method is sound; the vocabulary and the vessels need translating.
- What a chine isThe chine is the pork backbone with the meat still attached along it, sawn from the carcass when the hog is broken down. Butcher shops sell it as country-style backbone or bone-in pork loin ribs; ask for it sawn into sections, since a foot-long piece will not fit most pots whole.
- "Set it in the stove"Here this means setting the meat to brown in the oven of the range rather than on the top; nineteenth-century writers used "stove" loosely. The book gives no temperature or time. Brown the boiled chine in a hot oven, basting once or twice, until the surface is dark and crisp.
- Irish potatoesOrdinary white potatoes, named to distinguish them from sweet potatoes, which were also widely grown in Virginia. Any floury variety works.
- Two hours of boilingLong simmering is what makes the meat pull from the bone, but keep it at a bare tremble rather than a rolling boil, which shreds the surface and clouds the broth you want for the potatoes. Modern pork reaches safe temperature long before this; the time is for texture, not safety.
- Salt the water, not just the potatoesThe recipe salts only at the mashing stage, which leaves a large piece of unseasoned meat. Salt the cooking water generously, and taste before adding more to the potatoes, since the drippings are already seasoned.
- Cooking the potatoes in the potThey go into the same water the chine came out of, which is the point: the mash carries pork flavour before any drippings are added. Skim the fat off the surface first unless you want a very rich dish.
- TurnipsTreated the same way, boiled in the pork liquor and mashed. They hold more water than potatoes, so drain them well and dry them briefly in the pan before mashing or the dish goes soupy.
- The corning noteThe closing line about corning chine and ham like beef is a remark, not a procedure. Salt-curing pork requires measured cure, weight and temperature; follow a current tested method if you want to try it.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. The largest of the three pieces is deliberately held back to be eaten cold, sliced off the bone.
Hog killing in cold weather governed the Virginia larder, and the chine was one of the pieces often eaten fresh in the days right after slaughter along with the spareribs, liver and chitterlings. Recipes for it follow a familiar shape: boil it soft, brown it for colour, and serve it over something starchy that has soaked up the pot liquor. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, gathered such contributions from named and initialled Virginia housekeepers, which is why this one ends with "Mrs. P. W." rather than a byline. The instruction to set the largest piece aside to eat cold is a household economy as much as a preference: a boiled and browned chine keeps well in a cold pantry and yields a second meal without a second fire.