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BEEF, RIBS OF (a la Fermiere)
Take a rib of beef, and cover it with slices of bacon well seasoned with herbs. Put into a stewpan a little butter, and let it melt over the fire, and place the rib in it, with some salt and pepper. Expose the meat to the heat of a quick fire, and when sufficiently browned on both sides, set the stewpan farther from the fire, so that it may continue to cook at a gentle heat. As soon as it is sufficiently done, remove the meat, and place it on a dish. Take some small cucumbers, slice, and cook them at a gentle heat in the gravy, and add to the meat before serving.
A pot-roasted rib cooked entirely on the stovetop, in the older French farmhouse manner, with a quick cucumber garnish made in the pan drippings. The method translates cleanly to a heavy casserole with a lid.
- The cut"A rib of beef" here means a bone-in rib joint; the text does not say how large, though a two- or three-rib piece (roughly 4-6 lb) suits the method. Ask for it chined (backbone sawed through) so it carves easily, and tie it if the butcher has not.
- Stewpan means a heavy lidded potStewpan -- A Victorian stewpan was a thick-bottomed metal pan used on the range top, usually with a lid, though this recipe does not say to cover it. Use a Dutch oven or heavy casserole just large enough to hold the joint; too wide a pan and the juices scorch instead of forming gravy.
- "A quick fire" then "gentle heat"Quick means the hottest part of the range: sear over high heat until both sides are well browned, roughly 8-10 minutes total. Then drop to the lowest steady simmer and let it go until tender, in the region of 2 to 3 hours. The recipe stays on the stovetop throughout and gives no oven setting; if you would rather use the oven, a low setting around 300F is a reasonable modern stand-in.
- The bacon is a barding, not a fillingLay the seasoned slices over the fat side and tie them on with string. They baste the joint and melt into the pan liquid; the recipe says nothing about serving them, and barding is generally discarded.
- DonenessThe recipe says only "sufficiently done" and gives no guide. Cooked gently in a covered pan a rib can be taken either way: pull it at 130-135F internal and rest 20 minutes for something still pink, or carry it further, to the 190-200F range, if you want a falling-tender pot-roast.
- The cucumbersUse small ridge or Kirby cucumbers, peeled, seeded if watery, and cut into thick slices. Ten to fifteen minutes in the strained gravy is enough; longer and they collapse. Salting the slices for 20 minutes first and patting them dry keeps them from thinning the sauce.
- Skim before servingBarded beef throws a great deal of fat. Rest the joint, tip the pan juices into a jug, lift off the fat, and return the clear gravy to the pan for the cucumbers.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a three-rib joint would serve six to eight, with plainly boiled potatoes to take the gravy.
A la fermière is usually rendered "farmhouse" or "farmer's wife" style, and in nineteenth-century French cookery it generally signals a joint cooked slowly in a covered pot with whatever vegetables came to hand, as distinct from the roast turned before an open fire. British household compilations of the 1870s and after carried many such French-titled variations alongside the plain national roasts, the professional kitchen vocabulary of the day being French; stovetop braising also suited the closed cast-iron ranges then coming in. The cucumber finish looks odd now but was not unusual: cooked cucumber, stewed or stuffed, appears as an English and French summer vegetable well into the twentieth century.