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Pork Chops En Casserole
6 pork chops 6 sweet potatoes Salt and pepper 1/2 cup brown sugar 1 to 2 cups milk Place a layer of sweet potatoes, sliced crosswise, in a greased casserole, dust with salt, pepper, and a little brown sugar; continue the layers until the casserole is about two-thirds full. Heat the milk and pour it over the potatoes; it should just cover them. Place the pork chops on top of the potatoes, cover and bake (at 350 degrees F.) for an hour, then remove the cover and season with salt and pepper. Leave the cover off and cook until the chops are tender and nicely browned on top.
Four tart apples, pared, cored and cut in eighths, used in place of the sweet potatoes, make an excellent casserole dish with pork chops.
A one-dish supper from the era when "casserole" had just shifted from meaning the pot to meaning the meal cooked in it. The method is sound; the main adjustment is for modern pork, which is far leaner than what this book assumed.
- Pork has changedChops in 1930 were thick with fat, which is why they survive an hour covered plus an uncovered browning period. Today's lean loin chops will be dry well before that. Use rib chops cut at least an inch thick, or shoulder (blade) chops, which have enough fat and connective tissue to take the time. An instant-read thermometer at 145F in the centre is the useful endpoint.
- Slice the potatoes thinThe sweet potatoes go in raw and must cook through in the same hour as the chops. Crosswise slices of about a quarter inch will do it; thicker rounds will still be firm when the pork is done.
- The milk will look brokenWhole milk held an hour at 350F with salt and pork drippings tends to separate into curd and clear liquid. This is expected and it tastes fine, but if the appearance bothers you, use half-and-half or evaporated milk, both of which hold together better.
- "Just cover them"The one-to-two-cup range depends on the size and depth of your dish. Pour heated milk until it comes level with the top layer of potatoes and no higher; more than that and the dish risks overflowing.
- Brown sugar quantityHalf a cup across the layers is sweet by current taste, closer to a candied sweet potato than a savoury bake. Two to three tablespoons gives the same glazed edge without the dessert character.
- The apple variationFour tart apples in eighths cook down much faster than sweet potatoes and may collapse over a full hour; check at 40 minutes.
- Vessel and yieldA covered dish of about three quarts holds six chops in a single layer. Serves six, and wants nothing more than a green vegetable alongside.
The New Delineator Recipes came out of The Delineator, the Butterick pattern company's long-running women's magazine, and it caught American home cooking at the moment the covered baking dish became a category of its own. A heading of this kind would have been unusual a generation earlier, when the word still more often meant the pot rather than what came out of it; by 1930 heatproof glass and glazed earthenware were in ordinary kitchens and magazines were promoting the single dish that went from oven to table as a labour saver. Pork with sweet potatoes and brown sugar, or pork with tart apples, is older than the format, resting on the same logic that pairs fatty meat with something sweet and acidic. What the recipe shows about its period is chiefly the fat: an hour under a lid and then an open browning assumes a chop that could stand it.