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Roasted Leg of Pork
Select a leg of pork weighing about six pounds, and score the rind evenly; place it on a bakingpan and set it in the oven, turning it frequently to insure even cooking; this will require about three hours for this weight of meat; baste frequently with its own drippings, and when done, place it on a dish, thicken the gravy with a little flour and butter, pour it over and serve with a sauceboatful of tomato sauce.
Roasted Loin of Pork, Bordelaise Trim off most of the fat from half a saddle of pork, take out the spine bone, and slightly score the fat, and stick in each end a clove of garlic; truss the loin and place it in a baking pan with half a pint of water and sprinkle it over with powdered sage, salt and pepper; cover the meat with a sheet of buttered paper, and roast in a moderate oven, basting it frequently. When it has cooked for an hour and ten minutes, place a few button mushrooms around it, and baste them with the liquor in the pan; then take out the pork, put it on a dish, and garnish it with cooked mushrooms; skim off the fat from the gravy, adding to it a few tablespoonfuls of rich gravy or a little glaze, boil it up once, and pass it through a fine sieve or strainer over the meat, and serve.
Roasted Loin of Pork, French Style Select a large loin of pork, score and cut off the minion or small fillet, remove the skin and take out the sinews, and chop fine; add an equal bulk of breadcrumbs to the minced meat, and mix in a little sage and parsley, together with one small onion, all finely chopped, sprinkle a little salt and pepper over, and form it into a stiff paste with the yolks of three eggs; fill the cavity of the loin where the fillet was taken from with this stuffing, and cover it with a piece of pig's caul, then fill the flap, and tie up the loin, after which set it in front of a clear fire, roasting it for an hour. Place it on a dish, sprinkle over with salt, pour over a little piquant sauce or rich gravy, and serve.
Three roasts run together in one paragraph: a plain scored leg, a loin with garlic and mushrooms, and a stuffed loin cooked at the open hearth. All assume a cook who knows a roast when they see one, so the book supplies neither temperatures nor doneness tests.
- Oven temperatureNone of the three gives a number. "A moderate oven" in this period is usually reckoned at somewhere around 350-375F; a six-pound leg is better started around 425F for twenty minutes to set the rind, then dropped to 325-350F for the balance.
- Doneness, not clock timeThree hours for six pounds is roughly right at 325F, but the joint decides. Whole pork cuts are done at 145F internal with a three-minute rest; a bone-in leg you intend to carve in thick slices is more pleasant taken to 160-170F, and a shoulder-style long roast wants 195F.
- Scoring the rindScore through the skin and into the fat but not the meat, at half-inch intervals. Dry the rind thoroughly and salt it; moisture is what stops crackling forming, and the frequent basting the recipe calls for works against it. Baste the meat, not the skin.
- Half a saddle of porkThe saddle is the whole loin section across both sides of the backbone; half a saddle is a bone-in loin roast from one side, and the hour-and-ten-minute roasting time suggests a joint of only a few pounds. Ask for the chine bone removed or cracked, which is most likely what the "take out the spine bone" step means.
- The minionThe minion or small fillet is the tenderloin, which runs along the underside of the loin. Modern butchers usually sell it separately, so for the French-style roast you will need to buy a tenderloin and a boneless loin and cut your own cavity.
- Pig's caulCaul fat, the lacy membrane from around the stomach, is still sold by whole-animal butchers and often frozen. Soak it in warm water to unfurl it. Two or three strips of thin-cut bacon or a sheet of buttered parchment tied on will hold the stuffing if caul is unavailable.
- Buttered paperParchment, buttered on the side that touches the meat, laid loosely over the top. It shields the surface without steaming it the way foil does.
- "In front of a clear fire"Spit-roasting before an unsmoking hearth fire, turning constantly and catching drippings. An hour is far too short in an oven for a stuffed loin; roast at 350F to 145F in the meat and 165F in the egg-bound stuffing, which will take closer to ninety minutes.
- GlazeThe "little glaze" is glace de viande, veal or meat stock reduced to a syrup. A tablespoon of commercial demi-glace or a heavily reduced stock does the same job of giving the pan juices body without flour.
- YieldA six-pound leg serves eight to ten; either loin serves six.
Oscar Tschirky was never technically the chef of the Waldorf — he was the maître d'hôtel, the public face of the dining rooms — but the 1896 book that carries his name reads as a working kitchen manual, and this entry is a good example of its compression: three distinct roasts crammed into a single unbroken paragraph, because the reader was assumed to be a professional who needed the differences, not the basics. The three versions map the era's culinary geography neatly. The plain scored leg with tomato sauce is Anglo-American; the Bordelaise, with its garlic cloves stuck into the ends and its button mushrooms and glaze, borrows a name that in classic French usage points to shallot and red wine (with marrow in the sauce proper) rather than to any strict formula; and the "French style" loin, stuffed with its own chopped tenderloin bound with egg yolks and wrapped in caul, is charcuterie technique applied to a roast. The instruction to set that last one before a clear fire is a survival from hearth cookery, likely already old-fashioned in a hotel kitchen fitted with coal ranges, and it hints that the text was assembled from older sources as much as from the Waldorf's own service.