No. 1797

Quarter of Pork Valenciennes

Quartier de Porc a la Valenciennes

Have a quarter of a young pork, salted for eight days without any saltpetre, and when ready for use wash it well in cold water; remove the hip bone, tie it up and cook it in water; when three quarters done drain, suppress the rind and finish cooking in the oven, and glaze with some clear gravy (No. 402) and white wine. Dress it on a long dish, trim the handle with a frill or ruffle (No. 10) and garnish around with risot (No. 739) in which two pounds of sausages have been boiled, finishing with a pinch of Spanish red pepper; at each end lay stuffed tomatoes (No. 2842), the rice on the sides, the slices of sausages on top. Cover the meat with an espagnole sauce (No. 414) well reduced with tomato sauce (No. 549) and seasoned with prepared red pepper; (No. 168); serve at the same time a sauce-boat of the same sauce.

← No. 1796 Loin of Pork a la Reglain Pork No. 1798 Rack of Pork Crown-Shaped with Small Onions →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer writes for a professional brigade with a curing cellar, a numbered sauce repertoire and a spit-roasted quarter of young pig. Two things need saying: the cure at the head of the recipe cannot be reproduced safely from this text, and almost every other element is a cross-reference to another page of the book.

The eight-day salting is the problemThe recipe gives no salt weight, no brine strength, no holding temperature and no meat weight. A whole quarter of pork held eight days in an unspecified salt at an unspecified temperature is exactly the situation where a cure fails in the deep muscle while the surface looks fine. If you want salt pork for this dish, buy it cured or follow a current tested brine recipe with weights and refrigeration; do not improvise from this line.
"Without any saltpetre" is not a reassuranceThe recipe gives no reason for the omission, and none can be read off the text. Modern curing practice uses measured nitrite precisely because uncured large cuts held for days at cellar temperature are the risky case. The omission makes the instruction less reproducible, not more benign.
What a "quarter" meansA bone-in quarter of a young pig, with the shank left long enough to take a paper frill at the table; the instruction to remove the hip bone points to a hind quarter. It is a banquet joint, dressed whole on a long dish.
The cross-referencesNo. 402 is a clear gravy, No. 414 espagnole, No. 549 tomato sauce and No. 168 a prepared red pepper. "Risot" (No. 739) is Ranhofer's risotto, here cooked with two pounds of sausages boiled in it, the sausages then sliced and laid over the rice.
Spanish red pepperMost probably paprika rather than chilli. Nineteenth-century menus used "Spanish red pepper" and "Hungarian pepper" fairly loosely.
Finishing in the ovenThe two-stage method, boiled until three-quarters done, rind removed, then finished in the oven and glazed with clear gravy and white wine, is a standard treatment of the period. Note that the text has the meat finish cooking in the oven, not merely glazing there.
ScaleWith the rice, sausages and stuffed tomatoes this is a set piece for a large table.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summary of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it reads like a warehouse inventory of a large brigade's working knowledge: over 3,000 numbered entries, each one leaning on the others so that a single roast pulls in several sauces, a garnish and a paper frill. Dishes styled a la Valenciennes in French cookery of this period are generally taken to indicate a rice garnish, often with ham or sausage worked through it; the name is usually associated with the northern French town, though the connection to any local dish is not documented and the rice association is sometimes traced instead to Valencia. The salted quarter itself recalls the older domestic tradition of the barrel of pork in the cellar, here cooked out, glazed and dressed with a frilled shank for the dining room.