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Crown or Coronet Roast of Pork
Select ribs of a young pig and have the butcher arrange and cut them as described in "Crown Roast of Lamb or Mutton" so that a ring will be formed with the scraped bones showing above the meat. Cover the tip of each bone with paper while roasting to prevent burning. When serving remove these papers and substitute a large cranberry as a finish to each bone, or a frill of paper may be used instead. Roast as you would ordinary spare-rib 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.
The original assumes you know how to roast a spare-rib and leaves everything to the butcher and your judgment. Here is what needs filling in.
- What to orderAsk for a crown roast from two center-cut rib racks (loin end), bones frenched, tied into a ring. Ten to sixteen ribs is typical; count roughly two ribs per person. A butcher who does not tie crowns will still french the racks, and you can bend them into a circle and tie with kitchen twine at the base and the midpoint.
- Oven temperatureThe book gives no temperature at all; "roast as you would ordinary spare-rib" would have meant a moderate oven, which today reads as roughly 350F. A common modern approach is 450F for the first 15 minutes to color the fat, then 325F for the remainder.
- The temperature that mattersCook to 145F at the thickest part of the loin, away from bone, then rest 15 to 20 minutes under loose foil. Older practice commonly took pork well past that, to 185F or beyond, largely from fear of trichinosis; trichinosis is now very rare in commercial pork, and a crown roast cooked that far is dry and grainy.
- TimingFigure roughly 15 to 18 minutes per pound at 325F, but the thermometer decides. A crown cooks faster than a solid roast of the same weight because the ring is open in the middle.
- Paper on the bone tipsSound advice, and foil caps do the same job with less fuss. Put them on before the roast goes in, not after the tips have already darkened.
- Stuffing the centerThe recipe fills the crown with mashed potatoes after roasting, which is the better method. If you roast with a stuffing inside, the center cooks slowly and the meat overcooks around it; bake dressing separately and spoon it in at the table.
- The applesSteaming rather than baking is the point of the garnish, and it works: baked apples slump and brown, while steamed ones hold their shape and skin color. Small red apples, uniform in size, steamed 10 to 15 minutes until just yielding.
- Frills and cranberriesPaper frills are still sold as "chop frills." A whole raw cranberry pressed on each bone tip is decorative only, not eaten.
The crown roast is a butcher's showpiece rather than a cook's, and it is often said to have entered American cookbooks as the trade of the professional meat cutter grew more elaborate. The Butterick Cook Book (1911) came from the pattern and fashion publisher, and its instinct throughout is presentation: the entry spends more words on the papers, the frills, the cranberries and the color of the apples than on the roasting itself, which it dispatches by cross-reference to the lamb version. "Coronet" appears as an alternative name. The two racks bent bone-outward into a ring were often called a crown; a guard of honor is two racks set facing each other with the rib bones interlaced above. Steamed red apples and cranberries with pork reflect the long-standing pairing of rich pork fat with tart fruit, and the fact that both were cheap and in season during the autumn and winter hog-slaughtering months.