PORK
PORK must be well done or it is apt to surfeit. When you roast a loin take a sharp penknife and cut the skin across, to make the crackling eat the better. The chine you must not cut at all. The best way to roast a leg, is first to parboil it, then skin it and roast it; baste it with butter, then take a little sage, shred it fine, a little pepper and salt, a little nutmeg, and a few crumbs of bread; throw these over it all the time it is roasting, then have a little drawn gravy to put in the dish with the crumbs that drop from it. Some love the knuckle stuffed with onion and sage shred small, with a little pepper and salt, gravy and apple-sauce to it. This they call a mock goosed. The spring, or hand of pork, if very young, roasted like a pig, eats very well, otherwise it is better boiled. The sparerib should be basted with a little bit of butter, a very little dust of flour, and some sage shred small: but we never make any sauce to it but apple-sauce. The best way to dress pork griskins is to roast them, baste them with a little butter and crumbs of bread, sage, and a little pepper and salt. Few eat any thing with these but mustard.
To roast a pig.
SPIT your pig and lay it to the fire which must be a very good one at each end, or hang a flat iron in the middle of the grate. Before you lay your pig down, take a little sage shred small, a piece of butter as big as a walnut, and a little pepper and salt; put them into the pig and sew it up with coarse thread, then flour it all over very well, and keep flouring it till the eyes drop out, or you find the crackling hard. Be sure to save all the gravy that comes out of it, which you must do by setting basons or pans under the pig in the dripping-pan, as soon as you find the gravy begins to run. When the pig is enough, stir the fire up brisk; take a coarse cloth, with about a quarter of a pound of butter in it, and rub the pig all over till the crackling is quite crisp, and then take it up. Lay it in your dish, and with a sharp knife cut off the head, and then cut the pig in two, before you draw out the spit. Cut the ears off the head and lay at each end, and cut the under-jaw in two and lay on each side; melt some good butter, take the gravy you saved and put into it, boil it, and pour it into the dish with the brains bruised fine, and the sage mixed all together, and then send it to table.
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