Roast Pork
A small loin of pork, three table-spoons bread-crumbs, one onion, half a tea-spoon chopped sage, half tea-spoon salt, half tea-spoon pepper, one ounce chopped suet, one table-spoon drippings. Separate each joint of the loin with the chopper, and then make an incision with a knife into the thick part of the pork in which to put the stuffing. Prepare the stuffing by mixing the bread-crumbs together with the onion, which must have previously been finely chopped. Add to this the sage, pepper, salt and suet, and when all is thoroughly mixed, press the mixture snugly into the incision already made in the pork, and sew together the edges of the meat with needle and thread, to confine the stuffing. Grease well a sheet of kitchen paper, with drippings, place the loin into this, securing it with a wrapping of twine. Put to bake in a dry baking-pan, in a brisk oven, basting immediately and constantly as the grease draws out, and roast a length of time, allowing twenty minutes to the pound and twenty minutes longer. Serve with apple-sauce or applefritters. -Miss M. L. Dods.
A bone-in pork loin, stuffed through a pocket and roasted in greased paper. The method is sound; only the oven language and the cooking time need translating.
- "A brisk oven"Read this as 400-425F. If you start hot for 20 minutes to set the surface and then drop to 350F, the stuffing has time to heat through without the outside of the loin drying.
- Cook to temperature, not by the poundTwenty minutes per pound plus twenty will take a loin well past 170F and leave it dry. Pull the roast when the thickest part of the meat reads 145F and the stuffing reaches 165F, then rest it 15 minutes.
- Kitchen paperThis is plain unbleached wrapping paper, not paper towel. Parchment tied with twine does the same job; foil works but steams the surface, so open it for the last half hour.
- SuetOne ounce of chopped beef suet is about two tablespoons. Butcher's suet is easy to order but not always on the shelf; the same weight of cold butter or coarsely chopped pork fatback keeps the stuffing moist in the same way.
- DrippingsSaved beef or bacon fat. Any neutral oil or lard will grease the paper adequately.
- "Separate each joint"This means cutting through the backbone between the ribs so the roast carves into chops at table without sawing through bone. A butcher will do it in a moment if asked to chine the loin.
- The stuffing pocketCut in from the end of the loin along the eye of the meat rather than slashing the top, keep the packing loose, and stitch or skewer the opening shut. Overpacked stuffing forces the pocket open as the meat contracts.
- BastingConstant basting is only worth it while there is fat in the pan. With a dry pan and a paper wrapping there may be little to spoon over early on, whatever the direction to baste immediately.
- YieldA "small loin" of four to five pounds bone-in serves six, with apple sauce as the original directs.
Sage, onion and bread-crumbs with pork, sharpened by apple, is one of the oldest fixed pairings in British cookery, and it travelled into American books almost unchanged. The attribution here is worth a look: "Miss M. L. Dods" points back to Mistress Margaret Dods, the pen name under which Christian Isobel Johnstone published The Cook and Housewife's Manual in Edinburgh in 1826, the name itself borrowed from the sharp-tongued innkeeper in Walter Scott's St Ronan's Well. Compilers of American community cookbooks lifted freely from British authorities and often credited them as though they were contributing neighbours, which is why a Scottish literary pseudonym turns up in such a collection between recipes signed by local ladies. The greased-paper wrapping is a pre-foil technique for keeping a lean cut from scorching.