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Roast Loin of Pork
(Germany.) Boil the pork until tender, then roast it in the oven with 3 onions, 3 carrots, sliced thin, parsley, thyme, and a clove. Baste with 1 cup of hot water or stock, and after half an hour strain and skim the gravy and reduce it by rapid boiling until there is barely enough to coat the surface of the meat. Dust it all over thickly with crumbs, and sprinkle a tiny bit of cinnamon here and there. Bake until brown and serve with cherry sauce.
A German treatment of pork that parboils first and roasts second, finishing with a crumb crust. The instructions assume a cook who already knows what a joint of pork looks like when it is done, so the numbers below fill in the gaps.
- The hinge: the gravy must be reduced almost to nothingEverything after the reduction depends on it. The strained, skimmed pan liquid should be boiled down to a syrupy glaze that just films the meat, so the crumbs stick and brown rather than turning to paste.
- Oven temperaturesThe recipe names no heat. If you want modern figures, a moderate oven (around 350F) for the roasting stage and a hot one (around 425F) once the crumbs are on will do the job; a couple of minutes under the broiler, closely watched, is an alternative for the final browning.
- "A clove" means the spiceIn a list with parsley and thyme, and with cinnamon appearing later, this most likely means one whole clove from the spice jar rather than a clove of garlic.
- Boiling firstPeriod loins carried far more fat than today's. A modern boneless loin parboiled to tenderness will be dry and grey; if you follow the method, keep the simmer gentle and short and let the oven finish the job.
- DonenessCook to 145F at the centre and rest ten minutes. Fear of trichinosis is often given as the reason for cooking pork to falling-apart softness, though the practice is older than knowledge of the parasite; either way the long cooking is not needed now.
- CrumbsDry fine breadcrumbs, not fresh soft ones, and not panko. Fresh crumbs steam and slide off the glaze; dry crumbs toast.
- Cherry sauceThe recipe does not specify the fruit; sour cherries (morello or amarelle) cooked down with a little sugar are the likeliest reading, and some cooks add a splash of red wine. Sweet cherries give a flabby sauce, so add lemon juice if that is all you have.
- YieldA 3 to 4 lb loin serves about six. The vegetables here are aromatics for the gravy, which the recipe tells you to strain, and are not meant to come to the table.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea belongs to a turn-of-the-century genre of travel cookbooks in which an American writer collects dishes country by country, and this one is filed simply as German. The method — simmer, then roast, then coat in crumbs and brown — is a thrifty way of getting a crust and a concentrated sauce out of one joint. Sour cherries were a common kitchen-garden fruit in the German-speaking lands and were preserved in jars for winter, and a tart fruit sauce does the same work alongside pork that applesauce does elsewhere. The recipe's vagueness about heat and time is typical of the period, when cooks judged an oven by hand and a roast by eye rather than by thermometer.