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Pork Cutlets, or Chops (INGREDIENTS Loin)
INGREDIENTS.-Loin, or fore-loin of pork, egg and bread-crumbs, salt and pepper to taste; to every tablespoonful of bread-crumbs allow teaspoonful of minced sage; clarified butter.
AVERAGE COST, 10d. per lb.
PORK, GRISKİN OF. cutlets, and scrape the top part of the bone.
Brush them over with egg, sprinkle with bread-crumbs, with which have been mixed minced sage and a seasoning of pepper and salt; drop a little clarified butter on them, and press the crumbs well down. Put the frying-pan on the fire, put in some lard; when this is hot, lay in the cutlets, and fry them a light brown on both sides. Take them out, put them before the fire to dry the greasy moisture from them, and dish them on mashed potatoes. Serve with them any sauce that may be preferred; such as tomato sauce, sauce piquante, sauce Robert, or pickled gherkins.
TIME. From 15 to 20 minutes.
SEASONABLE from October to March.
Note. The remains of roast loin of pork may be dressed in the same manner.
Pork Cutlets. (Cold Meat Cookery.) - INGREDIENTS. -The remains of cold roast loin of pork, 1 oz. of butter, 2 onions, 1 dessertspoonful of flour, 1/2 pint of gravy, pepper and salt to taste, 1 teaspoonful of vinegar and mustard. AVERAGE COST, exclusive of the cold pork, 4d.
Cut the pork into nice-sized cutlets, trim off most of the fat, and chop the onions.
Put the butter into a stewpan, lay in the cutlets and chopped onions, and fry a light brown; then add the remaining ingredients, simmer gently for 5 or 7 minutes, and serve.
TIME.-5 to 7 minutes.
SEASONABLE from October to March.
Two related methods sit here: breaded pork cutlets fried fresh, and a quick braise for yesterday's roast. Both are straightforward once the measurements are read in modern terms.
- The cut"Loin or fore-loin of pork" means bone-in loin chops. Ask for rib chops about 3/4 in. thick; the instruction to scrape the top of the bone is simply Frenching the rib for looks and can be skipped.
- Cooking time and temperatureCooking time -- 15 to 20 minutes in a pan is far longer than a modern chop wants. Fry 4-6 minutes a side over medium heat and pull the meat at 145F internal, then rest 3 minutes. The longer Victorian time reflects an expectation that pork be cooked right through.
- Sage proportionThe numeral has dropped out of the ratio; it may have read half a teaspoonful or a whole one. Half a teaspoon of minced sage to each tablespoon of breadcrumbs is a safe working figure, assertive but not medicinal; use less if the sage is dried rather than fresh.
- Clarified butter and lardClarified butter here is the binder dripped over the crumbs, not the frying fat. The frying is done in lard, which browns well and is worth using; neutral oil or a lard-and-butter mix works too.
- BreadcrumbsUse dry, fairly coarse crumbs from stale bread rather than panko or packaged fine crumb, and press them on firmly as directed. Resting the breaded chops 15 minutes in the fridge stops the coating sliding off in the pan.
- Draining"Put them before the fire to dry the greasy moisture" means drain them somewhere warm. A rack set over a tray in a 250F oven does the same job and keeps the crust crisp.
- Gravy for the cold-meat versionThe gravy quantity is printed unclearly; a quarter of a pint, about 5 fl oz or two-thirds of a cup, is the sensible reading for two onions and a dessertspoonful of flour. Use a good pork or beef stock.
- YieldNeither version states servings. Allow one bone-in chop per person for the fried cutlets; the cold-meat dish serves two to three depending on what the roast left behind.
Mrs Beeton's pork entries are organised around the calendar, and the note "seasonable from October to March" is the key to them: before refrigeration, pig-killing belonged to the cold months, and pork was distrusted in warm weather to the point that many nineteenth-century English cooks avoided it entirely between April and September. Sage with pork is an older English pairing still, carried through stuffings and sausages, and it is often explained as a corrective to richness. The second recipe belongs to the book's large "Cold Meat Cookery" category, a category that recurs in Victorian household manuals, where the joint bought on Saturday would presumably reappear in two or three further guises; the vinegar and mustard here are doing the work of freshening meat already once cooked. The sauces suggested, sauce piquante and sauce Robert, are French classics that had settled comfortably into English middle-class kitchens by the 1860s.