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Roasted Shoulder of Pork
Remove the bone from a shoulder of pork and spread it over inside with a stuffing of sage and onions, filling the cavity where the bone was taken out; roll up and secure it with a string, place it in a pan and roast in a good hot oven until done. Put it on a dish, skim off the fat from the pan, adding a little water to it and a table-spoonful of made mustard, boil the gravy up once and pass it through a strainer over the meat, and serve.
A boned, stuffed, rolled pork shoulder written in the shorthand of a professional kitchen, where the cook was assumed to know the weights, the times and the temperatures. Here are the numbers the original leaves out.
- "A good hot oven"Period guidance for a "hot oven" generally falls somewhere around 400-450F, so 425-450F is a reasonable reading, though the recipe gives no figure. For a rolled shoulder you can start at 425F for 20-30 minutes to set the outside, then drop to 325-350F for the rest of the cooking, or the stuffing at the centre risks still being cold when the outside is dry.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockA rolled shoulder is collagen-rich and does not eat well at the 145F now allowed for whole cuts of pork. Take it to 175-185F in the thickest part, which is roughly 30-35 minutes per pound at 325-350F for a boned 5-6 lb shoulder. The stuffed centre must reach at least 165F.
- "Made mustard"Prepared mustard, sold ready-mixed rather than as dry powder. An English-style mustard is the likeliest reading, though the recipe does not specify; a tablespoon into the skimmed pan juices is assertive, which is the point.
- The stuffingNo quantities are given. For a shoulder this size, roughly 2 large onions cooked soft, 3-4 cups of dry breadcrumbs, 2-3 tablespoons of chopped fresh sage (or a tablespoon dried), salt, pepper and an egg to bind. Stuff loosely; it swells.
- Boning and tyingAsk a butcher for a boned shoulder, skin on or off as you prefer. Tie at 1-inch intervals with butcher's twine so the roll holds its shape and the stuffing stays put.
- The gravySkimming the fat first matters more with shoulder than with loin, since it renders a great deal. Add about a cup of water or stock to the pan, scrape up the browned residue, boil once as directed, and strain. It is a thin pan gravy, not a thickened sauce.
- Rest itTwenty minutes under loose foil before carving. A rolled stuffed joint carved straight from the oven falls apart and loses its juices.
- YieldA 5-6 lb boned shoulder with stuffing serves 8-10.
Oscar Tschirky was never technically the chef of the Waldorf, but as maître d'hôtel he was its public face, and the 1896 Cook Book by "Oscar" of the Waldorf collected some nine hundred pages of the hotel's working repertoire alongside a great deal of standard American and European household cookery. This dish belongs to the latter category: sage-and-onion stuffing with pork is an English convention of long standing, the same pairing used for goose and duck, and it travelled into American kitchens intact. Sage is often said to be the herb that answers fatty meat, and shoulder — cheaper and fattier than the loin — was plausibly the cut a hotel could serve in quantity. The finishing touch of mustard whisked into the skimmed pan juices is sometimes described as an English habit, and it does the same job the sage does: cutting through the richness of a cut that renders a great deal of fat.