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Crown Roast of Pork
I crown of pork
Steamed apples
Cubes of salt pork
Salt and pepper
Mashed potatoes
Cranberries
Select ribs of a young pig and have the butcher make a crown, like a crown roast of lamb or mutton. Cover the tip of each bone with salt pork. Roast as spareribs are roasted, and serve with mashed potatoes inside the crown and a border of bright red steamed apples as a garnish. The apples should be of uniform size and steamed, rather than baked, to preserve their color. Remove the cubes of salt pork and cap each bone with a large cranberry, or with a paper frill.
The book assumes you know how spareribs are roasted and leaves the rest to the butcher. Here is what it does not say.
- Ordering the crownTwo center-cut rib racks, frenched and tied into a circle, gives roughly 12-16 ribs and serves 6-8 people at two ribs each. Ask for the chine bone removed or carving will be a fight.
- Oven and timeThe recipe only says "as spareribs are roasted" and gives no temperature. In modern practice a steady moderate oven, 325-350F, suits it; an 8-10 lb crown takes roughly 2 to 2 1/2 hours at 350F, but go by the thermometer, not the clock.
- Internal temperaturePeriod cooks took pork to 185F against trichinella and got dry meat for their trouble. Current guidance is 145F at the thickest part of the loin, away from bone, with a 3-minute rest; the meat will be faintly pink and that is correct.
- The bone capsThe salt pork cubes are there to keep the exposed bone tips from charring. Foil caps do the same job with less bother, and the paper frills the recipe offers as an alternative are still sold as cutlet frills.
- Don't roast with the potatoes inThe center should stay empty, or hold a loose ball of foil to keep the crown's shape. Mashed potatoes go in at the table, hot, after the roast has rested.
- Steamed applesSmall, uniform, red-skinned apples steamed whole until just tender, checking from about 15 minutes on, hold their skin color and shape; baking browns and splits them, which is exactly the point the recipe is making. Handle them with a spoon, not tongs.
- CranberriesRaw cranberries on the bone tips are decoration only, and they are hard and sour. Nobody is meant to eat them off the bone.
- SeasoningSalt and pepper are the entire seasoning list. Salt the outside generously at least an hour ahead, or the day before, so it has time to work into a roast this thick.
The crown roast is a butcher's showpiece rather than a cook's invention: two rib racks bent bone-outward and sewn into a circle, a form associated with professional English and American service by the turn of the twentieth century, more often for lamb or mutton, which is why this recipe explains pork by pointing at the lamb version. Butterick published household books alongside its dress patterns for a middle-class readership furnishing a formal table without a professional kitchen behind it, and the crown fits that ambition exactly - the difficult work is done at the butcher's counter, and what the hostess supplies is the arrangement: the white potatoes at the center, the red apples around the rim, the cranberry on each bone. The insistence on steaming rather than baking the apples, to keep the color bright, tells you the dish was judged first with the eye.