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Pork Chops with Fried Apples
Arrange Pork Chops on a platter, and surround with slices of apples, cut one-half inch thick, fried in the fat remaining in pan.
This is a finishing note rather than a full recipe — it assumes you have already cooked the chops by the book's preceding method (dredged, browned in a hot pan, then cooked through slowly). The apples are the point, and they are cooked in the pork fat left behind.
- The hinge: cook the apples in the pan drippingsThe whole appeal is the pork fat picking up the apple sugars. Pour off any excess so you are left with about two tablespoons, and scrape the browned bits from the bottom into the fat before the apple slices go in.
- Cut the apples across, not downHalf-inch slices cut crosswise give you rings that hold their shape in the pan; cored but unpeeled is best, since the skin keeps each slice intact. Wedges collapse into sauce.
- Choose a firm, tart appleBaldwin and Greening were the New England standards when this was written. Braeburn, Granny Smith or Northern Spy behave the same way; Red Delicious and Gala turn to mush.
- Timing for the applesMedium heat, about 4 minutes a side, until browned and just yielding to a knife tip. They should still have some bite when they reach the platter, as they carry on softening in the residual heat.
- Pork temperature has changedCooks of this period were taught to cook pork thoroughly, until grey through, out of fear of trichinosis, and official guidance stayed well above today's figure for much of the twentieth century. Current USDA practice is 145F at the thickest point with a three-minute rest, which leaves a chop still faintly pink and considerably juicier.
- Fat may need supplementingModern pork is bred much leaner than the pork Farmer's readers bought, and a pan of trimmed loin chops may render almost nothing. Add butter or a little oil rather than trying to fry the apples dry.
- QuantityReckon on one medium apple per chop, which gives four or five rings each. Season the apples with a pinch of salt as they fry; a scrape of the pan with cider or stock afterwards makes a pan sauce the original does not mention.
Pork with apples is one of the oldest fixed pairings in the northern European and American kitchen, and it survives on practical grounds: hogs were slaughtered in autumn, when the apple crop and the cider press were at their peak, so the two arrived in the kitchen together. In *The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book*, Fannie Merritt Farmer treats it as a variation slotted in among her other pork chop preparations rather than a dish in its own right — hence the single sentence, which presumes the reader has just followed the chop directions. That compression is characteristic of the book: Farmer is often credited with standardizing level measurements in American cookery. The apple slices fried in the pork fat also reflect the period's frugality with drippings, which were treated as an ingredient in their own right.