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Rolled Rib Roast of Beef
Have the ribs removed, meat rolled and skewered in shape, from a five-pound rib roast of beef, at the market, (have ribs and trimmings sent with roast). Wipe meat, sprinkle with salt, pepper, dredge with flour and arrange on rack in dripping pan. Place in a hot oven and, when slightly brown, reduce heat and baste every ten minutes for the first half hour with fat in pan, afterwards every fifteen minutes during cooking. (If cooked rare it will require one hour and fifteen minutes.)
A boneless rib roast handled the way any competent cook still handles one: high heat to set the surface, then a long moderate roast. The only real gaps are that the original gives no oven numbers and assumes a butcher who will tie the roast and send the bones home with you.
- "Hot oven," then "reduce heat"The book gives no numbers. A workable modern reading is about 450F until the surface browns, then 325F for the remainder. The recipe's own cue is the meat turning slightly brown; a thermometer is faster.
- Ask the butcher, stillA five-pound rib roast with the bones removed and the meat rolled is a standard order. Modern butchers tie with cotton twine rather than skewers; leave the twine on until after resting. Ask for the bones and trimmings, which are the point of the parenthesis.
- What the bones are forThe recipe asks for the ribs and trimmings to be sent home but does not say what to do with them; stock or pan gravy is the obvious use. If you want them in the roasting pan under the rack they will brown and render, but that is a modern addition, not an instruction here.
- Doneness by temperature, not by clockOne hour fifteen minutes for five pounds works out to about 15 minutes per pound, which is a fair estimate for rare in a boneless roll. Pull the meat at 120-125F in the center for rare, 130-135F for medium rare; it will climb another 5-10F while resting.
- BastingThe recipe wants basting every ten minutes for the first half hour, then every fifteen. In a sealed modern oven it does little for the interior, and each opening drops the temperature. Baste two or three times if you like the crust it gives, or skip it.
- The flour dredgeFlour on the salted, peppered surface browns early and gives a darker crust and a thicker fond in the pan. It is not seasoning so much as gravy insurance.
- RestingThe original says nothing about it. Let the roast stand 15 to 20 minutes, loosely tented, before slicing, or the juices run out onto the board.
- YieldA five-pound boneless roast serves six to eight generously, with meat likely left over.
52 Sunday Dinners, Elizabeth O. Hiller's 1915 collection, belongs to the American home-economics moment of the mid-1910s, when cookbooks were organized as full menus by week and season rather than as lists of dishes, and this entry is the archetype of the Sunday joint: a large cut, roasted whole and carved at the table. The rolled rib is the boned version of what Americans came to call prime rib and the British call a rib of beef; boning and rolling was a butcher's service, offered because it carves into neat rounds and cooks evenly, and the instruction to have the ribs and trimmings sent home reflects a household economy in which nothing paid for was left at the shop.