Pork is a traditional food to celebrate the New Year in many cultures. This elegant Pork Roast with Rosemary, Quatre-Épices and Honey can take pride of place on your table, whether on New Year’s Day or any day of the year. I first found the recipe in Laura Calder’s French Taste cookbook. It’s too good not to provide a link to the recipe here as part of my Other People’s Food series.
An Elegant Pork Roast with French Flair
If you’re planning dinner for New Year’s Day, you might want to include this easy and elegant pork roast on the menu. It adds a touch of French flair with very little effort, has a wonderful aroma and tastes delicious.
The recipe is from Laura Calder’s lovely cookbook, French Taste. It features a classic French spice mixture called quatre-épices, which simply means four spices.
I first made this roast on Christmas Eve in 2012, and sliced it for sandwiches over the holidays. The fragrance of the spices and rosemary scented the house in a festive way, and the honey made for a crisply sweet outer crust. The pork itself was cooked to perfection: done, but juicy.
The beauty of a roast like this is that, once it’s in the oven, you’re free to do other things. That might be preparing some potatoes and vegetables as a side dish, but I recommend you take a glass of white wine and sit someplace cosy to browse through French Taste for a few restful moments.
The Pork Roast Recipe
I found an authorized version of the recipe on the Food Network’s Canadian website. It doesn’t provide instructions for making the quatre-épices spice blend, although it does note its components. Interestingly, the ingredients provided in the Food Network recipe vary slightly from what Laura Calder notes in her cookbook.
See Laura Calder’s Roast Pork with Rosemary, Quatre-Épices and Honey recipe.
I always like to use a meat thermometer when cooking roasts, but the recipe doesn’t provide the temperature that indicates internal doneness. The Ontario Pork website recommends that you cook pork roasts to an internal temperature of 155°F (68°C), so they reach 160°F (71°C) after resting.
Quatre-Épices Spice Blend
Like many spice blends Quatre-Épices (four spices in French) has many variations, both in terms of ingredients and their proportions. I've made my version based on the one Laura Calder presents in French Taste, with slight modification. It makes a little less than two tablespoons, enough for a 3-pound pork roast. This classic French spice blend can be used with many other foods, such as chicken. Learn more about it at The Kitchn.
- 1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves
White pepper is classically used in Quatre-Épices, but I use black pepper. Some recipes also include allspice or cinnamon, and sometimes there are more than four ingredients, despite the spice blend’s name.
Looking for More Delicious Pork Recipes?
Here are some more delicious ways to put pork on your fork: Caramelized Apple-Stuffed Roast Pork Loin with Apple Butter Glaze; Italian Pork Stew; and, Pork Chops with Pizzazz.
First Published 2012 12 29
Republished 2020 12 31
That’s a beautiful roast, Mar, and great idea using it for
sandwiches over the holidays. For someone living alone, I prepare
quite a few roasts and that’s because I love sandwiches made with
the leftovers. In Summer, they’re the normal, hand-held type. This
time of year, they’re open-faced with a little mashed potatoes and
gravy everywhere. I could definitely see myself borrowing this page
from your Holiday Book and taking a roast straight from the oven to
sandwiches. Well, once pics have been taken, of course. 😉
I suppose I could have bought sandwich meat, but on a $ per pound basis I think this is more economical and I know exactly what I’m getting! Slicing it is a bit of a challenge though, with my bum wrist. I just need to remember to ask the Culinary Enthusiast to help, which he would gladly do.
I’m doing a new year pie, but your pork roast does sound
good 🙂
A pie (meat, I presume) sounds like a great way to welcome the new year. Happy 2013!
Beautiful on every level possible. I love the
spices!
Thank you! When I saw “quatre-spices” I thought of the Provencal spice mix and was quite surprised to see what went into this. But with happy results!
Boy did it smell and taste great!
[…] it), so this was a fly-by-the-seat-of-what’s-in-the-pantry meal. My mind first went to the pork roast with quartre-épices and other good things that I wrote about at New Year’s, but I’ve made that twice in the last few months. […]
This is a great post to finish this 2020 year and start a newer one thanks for for your post .happy New year eve.
Thanks Suzanne … as you’ll have seen by now, I had one more up my sleeve to end the year on a high note!