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To Roast Pork Tenderloins
For roasting, one is split almost through, laid open, spread with a good bread stuffing, covered with a second one similarly split, and tied in the middle and at each end. The oven should be very hot and the meat should be frequently basted with a mixture of butter and water. Fresh pork should always be cooked thoroughly. A fresh ham should have the rind well seared before roasting. When served cold in very thin slices it is equal to chicken.
A whole-tenderloin roast built from two pieces butterflied and sandwiched around stuffing. The method is sound; the temperatures and doneness advice need updating.
- The hinge: do not overcook"Fresh pork should always be cooked thoroughly" reflects an era of trichinosis anxiety and produced grey, dry meat. Current USDA guidance for whole muscle pork is 145F with a three-minute rest; because this roast is stuffed, take the reading in the stuffing as well and bring that to 165F.
- "A very hot oven""The oven should be very hot" -- in period cookery a very hot oven generally corresponds to somewhere around 425-450F. A tenderloin sandwich of this size will likely be done in roughly 30-40 minutes at 425F, so start checking early with a thermometer rather than by the clock.
- Size of the tenderloinsModern pork tenderloins run about 1 to 1.25 lb each and are considerably leaner than 1900 pork. Two of them, stuffed, serve four to six.
- Butterflying and tyingSplit each loin lengthwise almost through and open it flat; a few taps with a mallet between plastic sheets evens the thickness. Tie at 1.5-inch intervals rather than only at the middle and ends, or the stuffing works its way out at the sides.
- "A good bread stuffing"The recipe gives no formula; a plain period dressing would be stale breadcrumbs, butter, onion, sage or summer savory, salt and pepper, bound with a little stock or egg. Keep it on the dry side and pack it loosely; wet stuffing steams the meat from within.
- Basting with butter and waterThe butter-and-water baste is doing the work of a fat cap the tenderloin does not have. Modern lean pork benefits more from a light coat of oil or bacon draped over the top; open the oven as little as possible, since each opening costs heat in a short, hot roast.
- "A fresh ham"This means an uncured, uncooked hind leg, not the pink cured ham of a supermarket. Searing the rind here is the period practice of sealing the surface before roasting; it is an aside, not part of the tenderloin method, and a fresh ham of 12-16 lb needs hours at a moderate 325F, not the very hot oven called for above.
- Serving coldThe claim that thin cold slices are "equal to chicken" is period praise for a lean, mild meat. Chill the roast whole with the strings still on and untie it just before slicing, or it crumbles.
Pork tenderloin was an awkward cut for nineteenth-century American kitchens: two small, lean strips from an animal otherwise valued for its fat, cured hams and sides. Stuffing two of them face to face was one common answer, turning a pair of thin muscles into something that could be carved at table and stretched with bread. The insistence that fresh pork be "cooked thoroughly" belongs to the long concern over trichinosis, which shaped American pork cookery from the mid-1800s well into the twentieth century and left a habit of overcooking that outlasted the risk by decades. The passing note that fresh ham should have its rind seared, and that cold slices rival chicken, is typical of general household manuals of the period, which drifted from instruction into advice within a single paragraph and assumed a reader who already knew what a bread stuffing was.