Roast Chine
Although you cannot generally find the whole chine in the Northern markets, you can purchase a fair substitute in half a chine. The spine has been split and the cut has a onesided look, but it makes an excellent roast. Lay the meat in your baking-pan, brush it over with raw egg, strew thickly with cracker crumbs, which you have seasoned well with pepper and salt, and bake in a good hot oven. When the meat is heated through, baste it with butter and water. The basting after that, which should be tolerably frequent, may be done with the gravy from the meat. After you take up the meat, set the gravy in cold water and remove the fat which rises to the top. Thicken the gravy which is left with browned flour, boil at once, season with catsup or worcestershire sauce and send to the table in a gravy boat.
A plain pork backbone roast, crumb-coated and basted. The whole technique hinges on the crumb crust, which must set fast and then be protected from drying, so the oven and the basting schedule matter more than anything else here.
- What a chine isThe chine is the backbone section of the hog, with the loin meat and surrounding fat still attached, sold whole or split lengthwise. It is rarely offered under that name at modern American counters; ask for a bone-in pork loin roast, rib end, or a rack of pork with the backbone left on. The recipe gives no weight or yield, so buy to suit your table.
- "A good hot oven"The book gives no numbers; on modern equipment this is usually read as somewhere around 400-425F. A practical approach is to start hot for the first 20 minutes to set the egg-and-crumb crust, then drop to about 350F, or the crumbs will scorch long before the interior is done.
- Cook to temperature, not to timeThe original gives no time at all. A bone-in loin roast wants about 20 minutes per pound at 350°F, but go by a thermometer in the thickest part away from bone: 145°F, then rest 10 minutes. Modern pork does not need the 185°F our great-grandmothers aimed for.
- Cracker crumbsThese would have been plain crackers of the soda or common-cracker type, much less salty than modern ones, crushed fine. Saltines work, but cut back the added salt the recipe calls for. Dry unseasoned breadcrumbs are a closer match in texture than panko.
- Basting"Butter and water" is not quantified; a small amount of each is enough, and the water keeps the butter from burning on the crumb crust. "Tolerably frequent" suggests basting several times during the roast. Once fat and juices collect in the pan, use those instead, as directed.
- Degreasing the gravySetting the pan of drippings in cold water chills the fat so it firms at the surface and lifts off cleanly. A bowl in an ice bath does the same in about ten minutes; a fat separator is faster.
- Browned flourFlour toasted dry in a skillet or a low oven until nut-coloured. It thickens less powerfully than raw flour, so allow somewhat more, and boil it at once as the recipe directs.
- CatsupAt this period catsup could still mean mushroom, walnut or tomato catsup, all thinner and sharper than the sweet tomato ketchup sold today. A spoonful of Worcestershire, the other option given, gets you nearer the intended savoury edge.
The chine is a cut that belonged to home butchery rather than to shops: when a family killed a hog, the backbone came out as a single long piece and was roasted or stewed fresh, since unlike the hams and sides it was awkward to cure and perishable, and had to be eaten within days. That is exactly the situation this note describes from the other side, telling readers in Northern cities that the whole chine has effectively vanished from their markets and a split half is the best they will get. Roast chine, and chine stewed with dumplings, stayed on the table longest in the American South and in Lincolnshire, where hog-killing season and the dishes that followed it survived well into the twentieth century. The egg wash and seasoned cracker-crumb coating here is the standard Victorian dress for a plain roast, a way of giving a cheap bony cut the brown crust and the gravy of a company dish.