Home › Meat › Pork Chops with Dressing
Pork Chops with Dressing
6 pork chops onion, finely chopped 1½ cups bread crumbs 2 tablespoons pork fat, chopped teaspoon pepper 3-41-41 teaspoon salt cup hot water 1 beaten egg Mix bread crumbs, pork fat, seasonings, water and egg. Spread on pork chops. Put chops in a pan close together; add a little water to cover bottom of pan and bake in a moderately hot oven 1 hour, basting occasionally. 2-pound ham
A stuffing spread over chops rather than tucked between them, baked in a shallow pan with a little water so the bread softens instead of drying. The ingredient list has lost some of its fractions, so a few amounts have to be judged.
- Oven temperature"Moderately hot" in books of this vintage is usually taken as somewhere around 375-400F. At the lower end, an hour suits chops of about an inch thick with their topping; thinner chops will likely be dry well before that.
- Doneness, not clock timePork of the period was cooked through out of trichinosis caution. Modern pork is safe at 145F internal with a three-minute rest, so check with a thermometer in the thickest part of the chop, away from the bone, and stop there, whatever the hour suggests.
- The ambiguous seasoning lineThe salt and pepper quantities and the water measure have not survived intact. For 1½ cups crumbs, about a teaspoon of salt, a quarter teaspoon of pepper and roughly ½ cup hot water give a stuffing that holds together without turning to paste.
- OnionNo quantity is given. One medium onion, finely chopped, suits this volume of crumbs; softening it in a little of the pork fat first is safer, as raw onion buried in a dense stuffing may not soften as much as you would like.
- Chopped pork fatTwo tablespoons, minced fine; trimmings from the chops themselves would do. Rendered lard or bacon fat does the same job if the chops come already trimmed.
- Bread crumbsCrumbs from a plain loaf, dry or soft, rather than the fine sandy commercial sort. Packaged crumbs absorb more liquid, so add the water in stages.
- Packing the panThe chops are set close together, which helps them support each other's stuffing and keeps the pan moist. Use a pan they just fill rather than a large sheet.
- BastingThe water in the pan bottom will be nearly gone partway through. Add a splash more as needed so the pan juices never scorch, and spoon them over the crumb topping to brown it.
- YieldSix chops, one per person.
Cookbooks of the early and mid twentieth century were built around cuts a household bought weekly and stretched with bread. Spreading a crumb dressing over chops rather than stuffing a pocket or a roast is the frugal version of the same idea: the stuffing absorbs the fat and pan drippings that would otherwise be lost, and it turns six chops into a meal without a second dish. Pork was a mainstay meat in American cooking well into the century, and instructions of this era routinely specify long, thorough cooking because trichinosis was a genuine and widely publicised hazard before changes in feeding practice largely eliminated it from commercial herds.