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Pork En Casserole
1 tablespoonful powdered sage I heaping tablespoonful (I oz.) flour 1 teaspoonful salt 1 teaspoonful pepper 1 teaspoonful curry powder Hot apple sauce Cut up the onions and mix them with the sage.
Mix together the flour, salt, pepper, and curry powder. Dip the pork chops into this mixture. Put the onions into a casserole, lay the chops on the top, cover with hot water, and simmer in the oven for two hours.
Serve with hot apple sauce.
To make the apple sauce: Put into a saucepan one heaping cupful of chopped apples, add one tablespoonful of arrowroot, a few grains of salt, one tablespoonful of lemon juice, grated rind of one lemon, a pinch of powdered cinnamon and a quarter of a pint of cold water. Cook all together for fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally. Strain and serve in an earthenware gravy boat. 2 lbs. steak
The ingredient list as printed is incomplete — the onions and pork chops appear only in the method, and the stray "2 lbs. steak" at the end belongs to the recipe that followed. Read it as a braise: roughly 2 lb of chops on a bed of about three sliced onions.
- The casserole itselfThe casserole here is the vessel — an earthenware or fireproof pot that goes from oven to table. Any heavy Dutch oven does the same job.
- "Simmer in the oven"The recipe gives no temperature. 'Simmer in the oven' implies a low oven — somewhere around 300-325F — held below a boil, since boiling tightens the meat rather than softening it.
- Two hours and the cut of porkTwo hours suits thick shoulder or blade chops with bone and fat. A modern half-inch loin chop is dry in twenty-five minutes and will be sawdust at two hours; buy the fattier cut or shorten the time drastically.
- A tablespoon of sageA tablespoonful of powdered sage is a great deal for this quantity of meat. Start with a teaspoon or two unless you want the chops frankly medicinal.
- Cover with hot waterThe recipe says to cover the chops with hot water. Using less — up to the top of the onions only — keeps more of the flour coating on the meat, but it is a departure from the text. Either way the liquor is thin; reduce it on the stove if you want gravy.
- A quarter of a pintIf the measure is imperial, a quarter of a pint is 5 fl oz, about 140 ml or a little over half a US cup; if American, 4 fl oz, exactly half a US cup.
- Arrowroot in the apple sauceArrowroot thickens clear and sets to a light gel, but it breaks down under prolonged heat and stirring. Fifteen minutes is the outside limit; add it as a slurry near the end if the sauce looks thin.
- StrainingStraining turns the apple mixture into a glossy, almost jellied sauce rather than a chunky compote. Skip it if you want texture.
Pork with sage, onion and apple is often said to be one of the long-established pairings in English cookery — sage-and-onion for the fat, sharp apple to cut it — and this recipe simply moves the combination into a covered earthenware pot. The curry powder is the period detail: by the early 1900s commercial curry powder was a staple British and American pantry item, used less to make Indian food than as a general savoury seasoning, a spoonful stirred into soups, sauces and dredging flour for a warm, slightly exotic note. Arrowroot, likewise, was then the fashionable fine thickener for sauces meant to look clear and glossy, prized over cornstarch for its neutral flavour, and it was often kept on hand in the sickroom as well as the kitchen.