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Savory Fresh Pork
2 tablespoonfuls flour. butter 1 small onion. toes stock. 2 cups chopped meat 2 tablespoonfuls of 2 tablespoonfuls butter toes 2 flour I small onion 1 cup cooked toma- 1 cup of gravy or meat stock Salt, and red pepper, small, and chopped very fine Slice the onion and brown it delicately in the butter. Then add the flour and stir until well blended. Turn in the tomatoes, gravy, and meat.
Add the seasoning and cook until well heated.
Serve on a hot platter with baked potatoes.
A quick skillet hash for the tail end of a pork roast, thickened like a small brown sauce and served over baked potatoes. The ingredient column has run together in the original; read it as 2 cups chopped cooked pork, 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 small onion chopped fine, 1 cup cooked tomatoes, 1 cup gravy or meat stock, and salt and red pepper to taste.
- Don't overcook the meatThe pork is already cooked, so "cook until well heated" means just that -- five to eight minutes at a bare simmer once the sauce has thickened. Longer and roast pork turns dry and stringy no matter how much gravy surrounds it.
- Red pepperIn American books of this period "red pepper" means cayenne, not paprika and not sweet peppers. Start with a pinch; a generous eighth of a teaspoon is enough for this quantity.
- Cooked tomatoesOne cup of canned whole or diced tomatoes, with their juice, is the direct equivalent. If using fresh, peel and stew them down first so they don't thin the sauce.
- Build the roux properlyBrown the onion gently in the butter, then cook the flour with it a full minute or two before any liquid goes in. Skipping this leaves a raw-flour taste that the tomato will not cover.
- Gravy or stockLeftover pork gravy is already salted and thickened, so hold back on both the flour and the salt if you use it. Plain stock will want the full 2 tablespoons of flour and more seasoning.
- ConsistencyTwo cups of liquid against 2 tablespoons of flour gives a loose sauce that should coat the meat, not bind it. If it tightens too much as it heats, thin with a spoonful of stock.
- YieldServes four modestly, or three as a main course with the baked potatoes the recipe calls for.
Books of "left overs" were a familiar genre in American and British household publishing around the turn of the twentieth century, when a roast was bought whole and expected to reappear on the table two or three times. This dish resembles a pork hachis: cold meat chopped and reheated in a sauce built from the pan gravy, a treatment also common in French domestic cooking, where reheating in sauce was one accepted way to make yesterday's joint palatable. The tomato reads as an American touch -- canned tomatoes appear to have been readily available by this period, and they seem to turn up in such recipes to give brightness and acidity to meat that has lost its savor. Serving it over baked potatoes rather than toast or rice suggests a plain family supper rather than a company dish.