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Loin of Pork and Beans
Have a small loin of tender pork of about three pounds. Place it in a roasting pan. Sprinkle over one teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Make an incision with a knife in the middle of the loin about one and a half inches deep. Immerse a sound bean of peeled garlic, then spread one tablespoon fat over the loin and pour half gill cold water into the pan. Set the loin in the hot oven and roast for one hour, taking care to turn it every ten minutes and to frequently baste it with its own gravy. Remove the loin, lay it on a hot dish, skim the fat off the gravy, then add to the pan one pound cooked and well-drained white beans, briskly toss them, place the roasting pan on the fire and let boil for two minutes. Arrange the beans around the loin and serve.
A plain French-style roast with a clove of garlic buried in the meat and beans finished in the pan drippings. Most of what needs translating here is vocabulary and oven heat.
- "A bean of garlic"This is a clove, not a head; the phrasing probably renders the French gousse (properly a pod, hence a clove). One clove for three pounds of pork is restrained by current tastes; two or three, slipped into separate slits, is no betrayal of the method.
- Half a gillA gill is a quarter pint, so half a gill is 2 fl oz, or a scant quarter cup. It is there to keep the drippings from scorching, not to braise the meat — top it up if the pan runs dry.
- "Hot oven"In books of this period that generally means somewhere around 400-450°F. A three-pound loin at that heat for a full hour will likely overshoot; start hot for 15 minutes to colour the surface, then drop to 350°F and cook to an internal 145°F, which for a boneless loin is usually about 45-60 minutes total.
- DonenessPork was routinely taken to 170°F and beyond when this was written, which is why the timing looks long. 145°F with a three-minute rest is the current standard and leaves a loin that is faintly pink and still juicy. Use a thermometer rather than the clock.
- Turning every ten minutesPractical in a wood or coal range where heat came from one side. In a modern oven it does little; one turn halfway through is enough, and basting matters more than turning.
- The beansOne pound cooked and drained means roughly two 15-oz cans rinsed well, or about 6–7 oz of dried white beans soaked and simmered until tender. Cannellini, navy or great northern all suit.
- Finishing the panSkim the fat, then set the pan over a burner and toss the beans in the remaining brown juices for two minutes — long enough to scrape up what has stuck and coat them, not long enough to break them down. Taste before serving; the beans will need salt the drippings alone cannot supply.
- YieldFour servings, generously, with the beans standing in for both vegetable and starch.
The International Cook Book (1906) was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long a chef at Delmonico's in New York. The vocabulary here suggests the source: a "bean" of garlic reads as a literal rendering of the French gousse d'ail, and the technique — roast the meat, skim the fat, swill the beans through the caramelised juices left in the pan — is standard French roasting practice reduced to its bones. Pork with white beans is a long-standing pairing in French country cooking, the same logic that underlies cassoulet, though this version dispenses with the long confit and the crust entirely. The instruction to turn the joint every ten minutes belongs to a coal range rather than a thermostat-controlled oven, and survives in the text as a small fossil of how roasting once worked.