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Roast Saddle of Pork
Barley Flour Brown Gravy Apple or Tomato Sauce Strip the skin, trim the joint neatly and cover the fat with buttered paper. cover the fat with buttered paper.
Have a clear fire and baste often. Half an hour before taking up, remove paper, dredge lightly with the flour, and baste until it is brightly browned.
If Serve with the gravy and sauce. liked, skin may be left on, scoring it lengthwise, same way as saddle is carved.
A spit-roasting instruction written for an open fire, which is why the whole method is about paper, basting and a final dredge rather than temperatures. The saddle is the hinge: it is the undivided double loin, cut across the back with both sides attached, and almost no butcher stocks it without notice.
- What a saddle isThe full double loin, both sides of the backbone, and a correspondingly large joint. Order it ahead; most shops will otherwise sell you a single loin, which works but roasts faster.
- Oven equivalentA "clear fire" is a bright, well-burnt-through bed giving fierce radiant heat; the recipe names no temperature. If adapting to an oven, a hot start followed by a moderate heat is the usual approach, and it is safer to cook to an internal temperature than by the clock.
- Buttered paperGreased parchment laid over the fat, replaced today by a loose foil tent. Its job is to keep the fat from scorching before the meat is done; it comes off for the final half hour exactly as written.
- Barley flourA soft, low-gluten flour once common in British kitchens for dredging and thickening. Plain wheat flour or rice flour dredges just as well and browns as readily.
- Skin on or offThe recipe offers both. Left on and scored lengthwise, it needs to be dry and salted for crackling, and the buttered paper should be skipped over the scored area or the skin will steam rather than crisp.
- DonenessCook to 145F at the thickest point away from bone and rest before carving. Pork was generally taken much further than this in period cookery; there is no need to now, and the loin dries out when overcooked.
- BastingBasting does less for browning and juiciness than is often assumed, and frequent opening of an oven slows cooking. It does keep the fat cap from burning over an open fire, which is its job here; in an oven, two or three bastings are plenty.
- YieldA saddle is a large joint and will serve a sizeable table, carved in long slices parallel to the backbone, as the recipe's note on scoring lengthwise implies.
The saddle is a butcher's cut of the whole undivided loin, a term generally associated with mutton and venison butchery, where a saddle was the grand joint for a table with carving done in front of guests. Serving it with apple or tomato sauce places this squarely in the Anglo-American tradition of cutting rich pork fat with acid and sweetness; apple sauce with pork is the older pairing, while tomato sauce as a meat accompaniment spread widely in English-language cookbooks through the later nineteenth century, a period in which canned tomatoes also became cheap. A bride's cookbook would include a joint like this because a saddle is display food.