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Loin of Pork with Potatoes
Place a three-pound piece fresh loin of pork in a small roasting pan. Season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper. Peel, wash and lightly drain twelve small, raw potatoes and place around the pork; pour a gill of water in the pan, spread a tablespoon butter over the pork and potatoes and set in the oven to roast for one hour. Remove, dress the pork on a hot dish, arrange the potatoes around the pork and serve.
A bare-bones roast that assumes the cook already knows what a hot oven looks like and when pork is done. Two things need filling in: the temperature and the doneness test.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given, and the recipe does not name a heat level either; 350F is a reasonable modern default for a roast of this size. If you want the potatoes browned and crusted rather than merely soft, start at 425F for the first fifteen minutes and drop to 350F.
- A gill of waterHalf a cup. It is there to keep the fat and juices from scorching in a small pan, not to steam the meat; top up with a splash more if the pan runs dry before the hour is out.
- One hour is optimisticA three-pound loin at 350F is likely to take closer to an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half. Cook to an internal temperature of 145F at the thickest point, away from any bone, then rest ten minutes; the reading will climb a few degrees off the heat.
- Modern pork is leanerLoin sold today generally carries less fat cover than the cut this recipe assumes, and a single tablespoon of butter may not be enough. Score any fat cap, add more butter or oil, and baste the potatoes with pan drippings two or three times.
- The potatoes"Small" here probably means something nearer walnut-sized than the modern "small" baker, though the recipe does not say. Halve anything larger than about two inches so they finish with the meat, and turn them once so both cut faces catch the fat.
- White pepperWhite pepper is often chosen for a pale roast to avoid black specks, though the recipe gives no reason. Black pepper will serve if that is what you have, but the flavour is not the same.
- YieldThree pounds of loin with potatoes serves four generously, five at a stretch.
History: The terse "dress the pork on a hot dish" assumes that plating, timing and doneness were known and that only the proportions needed writing down. A cook of this period would have taken pork well past 145F as a matter of course, largely from long-standing caution about trichinosis; 145F with a rest is the current US recommendation, which is why a one-hour roast that once produced a firm, fully cooked loin now reads as a rough estimate rather than a rule.